(Top illustration:A dragon herself, by Rossdraws)
In Dany Part I – The Slaying of Saint George’s Dragon, I started out with analysing Dany’s first five chapters of aGoT through the conventional lens to establish how much George alludes to the legend of Saint George and the Dragon. On the surface, GRRM manages to reenact the legend across three chapters with the killing of the dragon. Except that dragon turned out not to be a dragon after all, just a cruel small-minded and abusive man claiming wrongly to be a dragon. Certainly the knight in the chapters is no true knight. Meanwhile, we could sense in that essay already that Dany did not truly match this “helpless princess” image of the legend. Most of the time, the re-enactment only “works” because some characters refer to her as princess, despite the fact she is neither behaving or dressed like a princess. And it becomes more and more a struggle to attain, when we simultaneously pick apart details and double layers of every other character, events or items used, but ignore the many layers of Dany and insist as seeing her only as a “princess in distress”. And yet the allusions and evolution of the story fits the Saint George legend, step by step. GRRM is too experienced a writer to do this merely for window dressing. The issue is that George deceived us: Dany is the true (last) dragon!
By itself that is a statement that makes readers (both fans as well as sceptics) fist pump. But I do not just mean this in the same way like a fan of a sport’s team would shout “Go dragons!”. When I say Dany is the true dragon, I mean that Dany is like a dragon soul trapped in a human body. This essay will show you that Dany’s arc does not start out with a princess, but a dragon egg dreaming to be born and grow up in the wilderness. That she hatches during her wedding amidst salt and smoke when gifted with dragonbone, whipping tail, flashing teeth and silver-smoke wings. From the Dothraki Sea until Qarth she is a hatchling, learning to use her tail, teeth and claws to defend herself. She is a draken from Astapor until Meereen who’s grown a belly, with now larger teeth and claws and of course deadly firepower. That Dany is a full grown adult dragon-queen who can make Drogon bow to her and the two become one. I will show you that Dany being a dragon is the reason why she thrives and grows in the Dothraki Sea. Along the way, I will discuss the prophecies to argue that in High Valyrian there is no word for prince or princess, but that is the common tongue translation of the Valyrian word for dragon. And yes, I will discuss Dany’s dragon dreams, and point out the two crucial aspects on how Dany managed to hatch them.
Whether you are a fan or a critic of Dany, I hope you will love this essay for all what I will point out to be evidence of Dany as dragon throughout her arc, for making you look at certain scenes and attributes through a dragon lens. It is plain impossible to discuss every scene, but with the examples from this essay, you will discover many more scenes with the dragon jumping from the page yourself.
- The Dreamtime (aGoT, Daenerys I)
- A Captive Dragon
- Egg or Hatchling
- Birthing Song
- The Dragon that was Promised
- The Hatching of Dany the Dragon (aGoT, Daenerys II)
- The Dragon that Mounts the World
- Conclusion or tl;tr
The Dreamtime (aGoT, Daenerys I)
A Captive Dragon
Imagine that you are a dragon in an egg, waiting for that moment until you can hatch. Perhaps you are an old reincarnated soul. Perhaps your dragon soul came into being when your mother laid you as an egg.
A princess, Dany thought. She had forgotten what that was like. Perhaps she had never really known. (aGoT, Daenerys I)
It does not matter. All that matters is the moment you are born, where you are born, when you are born. And until then you dream, a captive in your shell.
When he was gone, Dany went to her window and looked out wistfully on the waters of the bay. The square brick towers of Pentos were black silhouettes outlined against the setting sun. ( aGoT, Daenerys I)
The fires are lit. And the red priests sing.
Dany could hear the singing of the red priests as they lit their night fires and the shouts of ragged children playing games beyond the walls of the estate.
What would you as a dragon dream of during your dreamtime? Would you dream this?
For a moment she wished she could be out there with them, barefoot and breathless and dressed in tatters, with no past and no future and no feast to attend at Khal Drogo’s manse. (aGoT, Daenerys I)
I quoted both paragraphs in the first essay as well to illustrate how much Dany feels like a captive. I deliberately glossed over certain details then, to now highlight them. I did not make you pause at the mention of the red priests lighting fires and singing. I did not dwell on the weird paradox of a princess wishing to play beyond walls, barefoot and in tatters. Nor did I then show you how much that wish or dream compared to the moment when Dany sets first foot in the grasses of the Dothraki Sea.
The air was rich with the scents of earth and grass, mixed with the smell of horseflesh and Dany’s sweat and the oil in her hair. Dothraki smells. They seemed to belong here. Dany breathed it all in, laughing. She had a sudden urge to feel the ground beneath her, to curl her toes in that thick black soil. Swinging down from her saddle, she let the silver graze while she pulled off her high boots. […] Dany did not need to look. She was barefoot, with oiled hair, wearing Dothraki riding leathers and a painted vest given her as a bride gift. She looked as though she belonged here. (aGoT, Daenerys III)
When Viserys confronts Dany in the Dothraki Sea, her wish of the first chapter has just come true. Why is that relevant? Well, what happens to dragons kept in captivity? What does a dragon require to grow large and keep growing?
“[…] A dragon never stops growing, Your Grace, so long as he has food and freedom.” […]
“Freedom?” asked Dany, curious. “What do you mean?”
“In King’s Landing, your ancestors raised an immense domed castle for their dragons. The Dragonpit, it is called. It still stands atop the Hill of Rhaenys, though all in ruins now. That was where the royal dragons dwelt in days of yore, and a cavernous dwelling it was, with iron doors so wide that thirty knights could ride through them abreast. Yet even so, it was noted that none of the pit dragons ever reached the size of their ancestors. The maesters say it was because of the walls around them, and the great dome above their heads.”
“If walls could keep us small, peasants would all be tiny and kings as large as giants,” said Ser Jorah. “I’ve seen huge men born in hovels, and dwarfs who dwelt in castles.” (aSoS, Daenerys I)
They need freedom. Walls keep them small. Jorah’s side comment actually hints at the double meaning of what George is telling the reader: Jorah applies it physically to humans, but we ought to apply it metaphorically onto human dragons. So, in aGoT, Dany I, we do not have a captive princess, but a captive, chained, walled-in dragon wishing for the life of a wild dragon.
Together, the three quotes of what Dany wishes for, her dream coming true in the Dothraki Sea, and Selmy’s revelation about the dragonpit make clear why the Dothraki Sea, the Dothraki people and their way of life are such a match for Dany. The Dothraki Sea is as far beyond the walls as one can be. Not even Vaes Dothrak, the sole city of the Dothraki, has walls.
Vaes Dothrak was at once the largest city and the smallest that she had ever known. She thought it must be ten times as large as Pentos, a vastness without walls or limits, its broad windswept streets paved in grass and mud and carpeted with wildflowers. In the Free Cities of the west, towers and manses and hovels and bridges and shops and halls all crowded in on one another, but Vaes Dothrak sprawled languorously, baking in the warm sun, ancient, arrogant, and empty. (aGoT, Daenerys IV)
Nor is it any coincidence that Drogon makes his castle (lair) in the Dothraki Sea and takes Dany there to remind her what it is to be free, to remind her who she is.
“Remember who you are, Daenerys,” the stars whispered in a woman’s voice. “The dragons know. Do you?” (aDwD, Daenerys X)
This mirrors Viserys’s words trying to tell her she forgot who she was, during their confrontation in the Dothraki Sea. Except during aDwD, Dany locked up two of her dragons, fed on fruit and lambs, wore tokars that limited her movement, and forgot what it was like to be a dragon.
But we are straying ahead. I will often have to, as I must use Dany’s eggs and dragons to illustrate the dragon nature of Dany that George hints at. So, let us return to the dreamtime (chapter 1).
Egg or Hatchling
Is Dany an as of yet unborn dragon in an egg, or a captive newborn hatchling?
Each evenfall as the khalasar set out, she would choose a dragon to ride upon her shoulder. Irri and Jhiqui carried the others in a cage of woven wood slung between their mounts, and rode close behind her, so Dany was never out of their sight. It was the only way to keep them quiescent. (aCoK, Daenerys I)
A shell is as much a prison as a cage or chain are. Of course a shell or cage are necessary to protect the defenceless unborn or toddler dragon inside. Whatever your interpretation does not matter in relation to what follows in later chapters, but I myself lean towards an as of unborn dragon soul inside an egg.
For example take the bathing scene.
They filled her bath with hot water brought up from the kitchen and scented it with fragrant oils. The girl pulled the rough cotton tunic over Dany’s head and helped her into the tub. The water was scalding hot, but Daenerys did not flinch or cry out. She liked the heat. It made her feel clean. Besides, her brother had often told her that it was never too hot for a Targaryen. “Ours is the house of the dragon,” he would say. “The fire is in our blood.” (aGoT, Daenerys I)
It compares to the information we are given about the eggs.
She touched one, the largest of the three, running her hand lightly over the shell. […] The stone felt strangely warm beneath her fingers … or was she still dreaming? […] As she let the door flap close behind her, Dany saw a finger of dusty red light reach out to touch her dragon’s eggs across the tent. For an instant a thousand droplets of scarlet flame swam before her eyes. She blinked, and they were gone. […] She put her palm against the black egg, fingers spread gently across the curve of the shell. The stone was warm. Almost hot. (aGoT, Daenerys III)
Was it madness that seized her then, born of fear? Or some strange wisdom buried in her blood? Dany could not have said. She heard her own voice saying, “Ser Jorah, light the brazier.” […] Cradling the egg with both hands, she carried it to the fire and pushed it down amongst the burning coals. The black scales seemed to glow as they drank the heat. Flames licked against the stone with small red tongues. Dany placed the other two eggs beside the black one in the fire. As she stepped back from the brazier, the breath trembled in her throat. (aGoT, Daenerys VI)
When heated by the sun or fire, the eggs like the heat and they give off heat. Just like Dany loves a scalding hot bath, while resenting being sold.
Viserys selling off Dany also compares to selling dragon eggs, a far more easier feat than selling a hatchling let alone a draken.
Yet now Viserys schemed to sell her to a stranger, a barbarian. (aGoT, Daenerys I)
For a moment Dany was so shocked she had no words. “My eggs … but they’re mine, Magister Illyrio gave them to me, a bride gift, why would Viserys want … they’re only stones …”
“The same could be said of rubies and diamonds and fire opals, Princess … and dragon’s eggs are rarer by far. Those traders he’s been drinking with would sell their own manhoods for even one of those stones, and with all three Viserys could buy as many sellswords as he might need.” (aGoT, Daenerys V)They crowded around Kraznys and the dragon, shouting advice. Though the Astapori yanked and tugged, Drogon would not budge off the litter. Smoke rose grey from his open jaws, and his long neck curled and straightened as he snapped at the slaver’s face. It is time to cross the Trident, Dany thought, as she wheeled and rode her silver back. Her bloodriders moved in close around her. “You are in difficulty,” she observed.
“He will not come,” Kraznys said.
“There is a reason. A dragon is no slave.” (aSoS, Daenerys III)
Notice too how it is not a parallel between the selling, but what Viserys believes he bought by selling Dany and what he hopes to buy by selling Dany’s three dragon eggs – an army. Dany too bought an army, without selling, because her draken would not let himself be sold. And she knew he would not.
Finally, towards the end of the chapter, Dany is announced at Drogo’s manse as Daenerys Stormborn, Princess of Dragonstone. I ask you: what else is a dragonstone but a dragon egg?
She lifted it delicately, expecting that it would be made of some fine porcelain or delicate enamel, or even blown glass, but it was much heavier than that, as if it were all of solid stone. The surface of the shell was covered with tiny scales, and as she turned the egg between her fingers, they shimmered like polished metal in the light of the setting sun. One egg was a deep green, with burnished bronze flecks that came and went depending on how Dany turned it. Another was pale cream streaked with gold. The last was black, as black as a midnight sea, yet alive with scarlet ripples and swirls. “What are they?” she asked, her voice hushed and full of wonder.
“Dragon’s eggs, from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai,” said Magister Illyrio. “The eons have turned them to stone, yet still they burn bright with beauty.” (aGoT, Daenerys II)
Birthing Song
Twice singing is featured in the first chapter. First there is the singing of the red priests as Dany dreams of being a free dragon playing in the wilderness.
The square brick towers of Pentos were black silhouettes outlined against the setting sun. Dany could hear the singing of the red priests as they lit their night fires […] ( aGoT, Daenerys I)
And then there is the eunuch who SINGS Dany’s announcement at Drogo’s mansion.
Inside the manse, the air was heavy with the scent of spices, pinchfire and sweet lemon and cinnamon. They were escorted across the entry hall, where a mosaic of colored glass depicted the Doom of Valyria. Oil burned in black iron lanterns all along the walls. Beneath an arch of twining stone leaves, a eunuch sang their coming. “Viserys of the House Targaryen, the Third of his Name,” he called in a high, sweet voice, “King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm. His sister, Daenerys Stormborn, Princess of Dragonstone. His honorable host, Illyrio Mopatis, Magister of the Free City of Pentos.” (aGoT, Daenerys I)
Firstly, notice that the singing is precluded by the black-red color scheme of House Targaryen and the color scheme of the dragon Drogon, which is eventually the dragon that Dany unifies with in a way by the end of aDwD. After all a sunset and a depiction of the Doom would look blood and fiery red. The scent of spices at the manse replaces the nightfires of the red priests, because in GRRM-lingo spices = fire. For example his short story A Song For Lya of 1974 has people and Shkeen voluntarily sacrifice themselves to a giant red fungus in a process where they first put a minor sized part of the fungus on their skull in a ceremony called joining. Over time the fungus grows and survives on their body, until eventually one such Joined individual goes to the caves where the humongous fungus resides and simply walks into the blob of jelly to be consumed there. Early in the story, the protagonist meets such a volunteer who hands him a spiced meatroll.
The meatroll was still in my hand, its crust burning my fingers. “Should I eat this?” I asked Lya.
She took a bite out of hers. “Why not? We had them last night in the restaurant, right? And I’m sure Valcarenghi would’ve warned us if the native food was poisonous.”
That made sense, so I lifted the roll to my mouth and took a bite as I walked. It was hot, and also hot, and it wasn’t a bit like the meatrolls we’d sampled the previous night. Those had been golden, flaky things, seasoned gently with orangespice from Baldur. The Shkeen version was crunchy, and the meat inside dripped grease and burned my mouth. (Dreamsongs Part 1, A Song For Lya; transcription and observations by the Fattest Leech)
While the eunuch announces Visery and Illyrio along with Dany, she is the sole one directly tied to the word dragon here (twice actually – see later) via being of Dragonstone, or coming from a dragon egg.
Take note that the announcer at the manse is a eunuch. Being emasculated, eunuchs are considered genderless. Dragons too are considered genderless, because nobody can ever be sure whether they are male or female, until one lays a clutch of those dragonstones. Meanwhile Septon Barth and maester Aemon believe that dragons can change their gender with need.
Maester Aemon: “Dragons are neither male nor female, Barth saw the truth of that, but now one and now the other, as changeable as flame.” (aFfC, Samwell IV)
Much later in aGoT we learn of a thing called birthing song.
“Before,” Dany said to the ugly Lhazareen woman, “I heard you speak of birthing songs …”
“I know every secret of the bloody bed, Silver Lady, nor have I ever lost a babe,” Mirri Maz Duur replied. (aGoT, Daenerys VII)
And as MMD burns, she sings during the birthing event of the dragons from the three dragon stones.
Mirri Maz Duur began to sing in a shrill, ululating voice. The flames whirled and writhed, racing each other up the platform. The dusk shimmered as the air itself seemed to liquefy from the heat. Dany heard logs spit and crack. The fires swept over Mirri Maz Duur. Her song grew louder, shriller … then she gasped, again and again, and her song became a shuddering wail, thin and high and full of agony. (aGoT, Daenerys X)
As the Fattest Leech has pointed out in Waking the Last Dragon, on twitter and westeros.org posts, Mirri Maz Duur’s song should be interpreted as a birthing song. If Mirri’s singing symbolizes the birthing of the beasty-dragons at the end of aGoT, then the eunuch singing Daenerys’s entrance on the stage of Drogo’s manse, symbolizes the birth of dragon Daenerys.
So, Dany’s first chapter is structured with red priests lighting the fires and singing a birthing song to kick-off the hatching. She then gets a scalding hot bath to promote the hatching. And as the eunuch sings his announcement of Dany, she is about to hatch.
The Dragon that was Promised
No, this is not a section where I will show evidence of Dany being the Prince that was Promised or Azor Ahai come again. This section is about the word for prince and princess in High Valyrian, or rather that there is no word for prince and princess in High Valyrian. Instead I propose the High Valyrian title for a dragonrider is dragon.
There is no direct confirmation of this yet, but maester Aemon’s words to Samwell heavily suggest this.
“No one ever looked for a girl,” he said. “It was a prince that was promised, not a princess. […] What fools we were, who thought ourselves so wise! The error crept in from the translation. Dragons are neither male nor female, Barth saw the truth of that, but now one and now the other, as changeable as flame. The language misled us all for a thousand years. […].” (aFfC, Samwell IV)
From these sentences, we can deduce several facts about the prophecy and its title.
- The prince that was promised was translated from another language.
- The original word in the other language means dragon, but was translated into prince.
- Even in the original language the word dragon was misleading, as that specific word is genderless, since dragons are considered genderless. And for thousand years the promised hero was presumed to be male.
The question now becomes which language was the other language. It is either the language of Asshai or High Valyrian. We know the word or name for the hero in the language of Asshai is Azor Ahai (come again). Does that mean dragon? Possible. Not known. We do not know the actual word for dragon in High Valyrian, except that the word for dragonfire is dracarys. But we can exclude there being a word for prince or princess in High Valyrian: Old Valyria had neither king nor emperor, and therefore no princes or princesses.
Valyria at the zenith of its power was neither a kingdom nor an empire… or at least it had neither a king nor an emperor. It was more akin to the old Roman Republic, I suppose. In theory, the franchise included all “free holders,” that is freeborn landowners. Of course in practice wealthy, highborn, and sorcerously powerful families came to dominate. (SSM – SF, Targaryens, Valyria, Sansa, Martells, and more; June 26 2001)
Or I must say it more nuanced. If Valyrian has a word for prince or princess, it would be a loan-word from another language, not an original Valyrian word.
“Wait a minute, SSR!” I hear you thinking. “Are you sure that AA = tPtwP?” Well, there is sufficient evidence in the books to determine that the prophecies contain the same elements and that one is a translation of the other.
We first learn of the prophecy of Azor Ahai come again via Melisandre in aCoK, Davos.
Melisandre: “In ancient books of Asshai it is written that there will come a day after a long summer when the stars bleed and the cold breath of darkness falls heavy on the world. In this dread hour a warrior shall draw from the fire a burning sword. And that sword shall be Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes, and he who clasps it shall be Azor Ahai come again, and the darkness shall flee before him.” (aCoK, Davos I)
Melisandre: “It is written in prophecy as well. When the red star bleeds and the darkness gathers, Azor Ahai shall be born again amidst smoke and salt to wake dragons out of stone. (aSoS, Davos III)
According to the above the prophecy about Azor Ahai come again includes several signs:
- a red star bleeding,
- cold darkness coming
- warrior
- will draw from fire a burning sword, Lightbringer
- born again amidst smoke and salt
- to wake dragons out of stone
The vision of Rhaegar in the HotU mentions the prophecy of the prince that was promised to Elia Martell, believing his son Aegon to be this prince.
“He has a song,” the man replied. “He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire.” He looked up when he said it and his eyes met Dany’s, and it seemed as if he saw her standing there beyond the door. (aCoK, Daenerys IV)
Maester Aemon later reveals to Samwell that Rhaegar believed his son Aegon was tPtwP: a comet was seen above King’s Landing on the night Aegon was conceived.
[…] but later he became persuaded that it was his own son who fulfilled the prophecy, for a comet had been seen above King’s Landing on the night Aegon was conceived, and Rhaegar was certain the bleeding star had to be a comet. (aFfC, Samwell IV)
Note that Rhaegar referred to the wording of the bleeding star.
Maester Aemon believed Rhaegar was tPtwP, because he was born during the tragedy of Summerhall, amidst smoke (from the fire) and salt (from tears).
Rhaegar, I thought . . . the smoke was from the fire that devoured Summerhall on the day of his birth, the salt from the tears shed for those who died. He shared my belief when he was young, […] (aFfC, Samwell IV)
And Selmy tells Dany that when Rhaegar started out bookish, but one day came out as a young boy wanting to be trained into becoming a warrior, as he believed he was supposed to become one.
Barristan Selmy: “As a young boy, the Prince of Dragonstone was bookish to a fault. He was reading so early that men said Queen Rhaella must have swallowed some books and a candle whilst he was in her womb. Rhaegar took no interest in the play of other children. The maesters were awed by his wits, but his father’s knights would jest sourly that Baelor the Blessed had been born again. Until one day Prince Rhaegar found something in his scrolls that changed him. No one knows what it might have been, only that the boy suddenly appeared early one morning in the yard as the knights were donning their steel. He walked up to Ser Willem Darry, the master-at-arms, and said, ‘I will require sword and armor. It seems I must be a warrior.‘” (aSoS, Daenerys I)
Evidently, Selmy does not know what it was that made Rhaegar believe this, but maester Aemon does.
And upon learning about Dany, maester Aemon ends up believing she is tPtwP, for she too was born amidst salt and smoke, and hatched dragons.
“Daenerys is the one, born amidst salt and smoke. The dragons prove it.” (aFfC, Samwell IV)
The mystery knight confirms that even as a boy, Aegon V (aka Egg) knew of the prophecy involving the return of dragons, because his uncle King Aerys I read it in the books or scrolls he read. Aerys is the likely rediscoverer of the prophecy in modern times.
Egg lowered his voice. “Someday the dragons will return. My brother Daeron’s dreamed of it, and King Aerys read it in a prophecy. Maybe it will be my egg that hatches. That would be splendid.” (The Mystery Knight)
All of Maekar I’s sons dreamed of it: Aerion Brightflame, Daeron, Aemon and Aegon V. And not once, or twice, but throughout their life. Maester Aemon describes his dream to Samwell.
“I see [dragons] in my dreams, Sam. I see a red star bleeding in the sky. I still remember red. I see their shadows on the snow, hear the crack of leathern wings, feel their hot breath. My brothers dreamed of dragons too, and the dreams killed them, every one.” (aFfC, Samwell III)
A word of caution on interpreting this dream – dragons in dragon dreams may represent a person with Targaryen blood as much as an actual beastly dragon. In the Mystery Knight, Daemon II Blackfyre dreams of a dragon hatching from an egg at Whitewalls, and it turns out to be Egg coming out to be Aegon Targaryen.
“A dragon will hatch? A living dragon? What, here?”
“I dreamed it. This pale white castle, you, a dragon bursting from an egg, I dreamed it all, just as I once dreamed of my brothers lying dead. They were twelve and I was only seven, so they laughed at me, and died. I am two-and-twenty now, and I trust my dreams.” Dunk was remembering another tourney, remembering how he had walked through the soft spring rains with another princeling. I dreamed of you and a dead dragon, Egg’s brother Daeron said to him. A great beast, huge, with wings so large, they could cover this meadow. It had fallen on top of you, but you were alive and the dragon was dead. And so he was, poor Baelor. Dreams were a treacherous ground on which to build. “As you say, m’lord,” he told the Fiddler. (The Mystery Knight)
Regardless, even those who dream and know the dragons they see are not necessarily beastly dragons, but kindred with dragon blood, still can come to believe it is about beastly dragons after all, if they have the dreams enough, certainly the generations after the last beastly dragon died and no egg hatched anymore. And if those dreams such as Aemon’s include red bleeding stars, we can see how the Targaryens since King Aerys I came to believe in the prophecies written down such as in the Jade Compendium. The last years of Aegon V’s reign were focused on uncovering ancient lore to hatch dragons. These would be the same years when Aegon V’s son Duncan’s wife Jenny of Oldstones brought a woods witch (possibly the Ghost of High Heart) who prophesied that tPtwP would be born of the line of Aerys and Rhaella Targaryen.
Barristan Selmy: “Your grandsire commanded it. A woods witch had told him that the prince was promised would be born of their [Aerys’s and Rhaella’s] line.” (aDwD, Daenerys IV)
Jaehaerys, son of Aegon V, wanted his son and daughter to be wed, even though they had no specific liking for one another. Aegon V was agaiinst incestuous marriages. He had promised his own children to sons and daughters of other lords of Westeros, and Jaehaerys only managed to wed his sister in secret. And yet, Aegon V allowed Jaeharys to arrange the marriage between Aerys and Rhaella.
Aegon V’s focus may not have been so much on promoting the birth of tPtwP as it was on hatching dragons. And yet, the return of dragons seemed tied to the coming of the promised hero.
Azor Ahai shall be born again amidst smoke and salt to wake dragons out of stone. (aSoS, Davos III)
While the prophecy line does not explicitly state that the birth of the hero and the return of dragons will occur simultaneously, it is not abnormal that those who believe in the prophecy would expect it to be a simultaneous event. It could be read as the birth of the hero will trigger the return of dragons. And while some readers presume Rhaegar’s birth was triggered because of Rhaella’s distress during the unfolding of the tragedy, Aegon V’s actions point to the birth to be expected around this time.
In the fateful year 259 AC, the king summoned many of those closest to him to Summerhall, his favorite castle, there to celebrate the impending birth of his first great-grandchild, a boy later named Rhaegar, to his grandson Aerys and granddaughter Rhaella, the children of Prince Jaehaerys. (tWoIaF – The Targaryen Kings: Aegon V)
Not only did Aegon V invite those closest to him to celebrate the coming birth of Rhaegar. He also had seven dragon eggs brought and gathered in the palace of Summerhall. At the time these Targaryens were presumed to be alive before the tragic took place: Aegon V, his children Duncan, Jaehaerys, Shaera, and his grandchildren Aerys and Rhaella, with Rhaegar about to be born. His youngest son Daeron had died in 251 AC. We do not know when his youngest daughter Rhaelle died, but she was wed to Ormund Baratheon and Aegon V would have been unlikely willing to gift a dragon to the wife of the son of the Lord Baratheon who had attempted to rebel against Aegon V. So, we have seven eggs and six Targaryens with one expected to be born, and believed at the time to be this prophesied hero. It seems very much that Aegon V attempted to use the expected moment of Rhaegar’s birth to hatch seven dragons in order to gift all of his family hatchling dragons.
Finally, maester Aemon links tPtwP to the war for the dawn.
But all of them seemed surprised to hear Maester Aemon murmur, “It is the war for the dawn you speak of, my lady. But where is the prince that was promised?”
So, according to Aemon, Rhaegar and Aegon V’s efforts at Summerhall the Prince that was Promised prophecy includes the following elements:
- a bleeding star
- the war for the dawn
- warrior
- born amidst smoke and salt
- hatching dragons
- the song of ice and fire
- born of the line of Aerys II and Rhaella Targaryen
This all compares to the Azor Ahai prophecy. The sole thing that is missing is the magical sword Lightbringer. And the last two elements of the list came from seers or poets who added to the tPtwP prophecy.
While yes, one could argue that the Targaryens may have glued tPtwP prophecy onto what they found about the Azor Ahai prophecy, we should not dismiss the fact that Aemon explicitly dreamed of a red bleeding star in his dragon dreams, as well as dragons in the snow. So, while we might be sceptic of Melisandre believing the prophecies about Azor Ahai and tPtwP are one and the same. Aemon’s agreement with this assumption lends credibility to it.
So, we have two primary sources for tPtwP so far – dragon dreams and the woods witch. Maester Aemon also confirms the use of secondary sources tied to the Asshai Azor Ahai prophecy with asking Samwell to fetch the Jade Compendium and leaving it for Jon.
[Sam] had to get down on his knees to gather up the books he’d dropped. I should not have brought so many, he told himself as he brushed the dirt off Colloquo Votar’s Jade Compendium, a thick volume of tales and legends from the east that Maester Aemon had commanded him to find. The book appeared undamaged. Maester Thomax’s Dragonkin,
[…]
“Lord Snow,” Maester Aemon called, “I left a book for you in my chambers. The Jade Compendium. It was written by the Volantene adventurer Colloquo Votar, who traveled to the east and visited all the lands of the Jade Sea. There is a passage you may find of interest. I’ve told Clydas to mark it for you.” (aFfC, Samwell I)
But since the prophecy is five thousand years old and maester Yandel claims the Rhllorists spread it westward from Asshai, it is unlikely that the prophecy passed by the ears of the Valyrians.
It is also written that there are annals in Asshai of such a darkness, and of a hero who fought against it with a red sword. His deeds are said to have been performed before the rise of Valyria, in the earliest age when Old Ghis was first forming its empire. This legend has spread west from Asshai, and the followers of R’hllor claim that this hero was named Azor Ahai, and prophesy his return. (tWoIaF – Ancient History: the Long Night)
Ignoring readers’ timeline debates, we can conclude that this would mean the prophecy was written down between one to three millenia after the Long Night. In Essos, Old Ghis rose after the Long Night. As they enslaved the people they conquered and expanded their empire, the Valyrians at the peninsula began to tame dragons that roamed amidst the Fourteen Flames. Valyria and Old Ghis warred five times, after which the Valyrians conquered Old Ghis and enslaved them. Valyria began to expand its conquest and military influence westward, until eventually the Andals migrated across the Narrow Sea to escape Valyria’s hunger for slaves and land. The Andals landed in Westeros depending on sources and Long Night timing you use either 6000 AC, 4000 AC or 2000 AC. Commonly 4000 AC is accepted. This means that the prophecy about AA or tPtwP was written around the time Valyria defeated Old Ghis, and High Valyrian became the standard language in Essos.
Meanwhile the World Book informs us of opposing claims regarding the origin of dragons:
- The Valyrians claimed the dragons sprang forth as the children of the Fourteen Flames. The issue with the Valyrian claim is that dragons existed outside of Valyria and this since before the rise of Valyria. Dragonbones have been found in Westeros, in Ib. There are legends predating Old Valyria about dragonslayers in Westeros, such as a Hightower and of course Serwyn. Wild dragons lived already on the island of Dragonstone prior to the Targaryens moved there, and they were the sole dragonriding family of Valyria settling in Westeros. Of course, the Valyrian claim may have been made in good faith. It is possible that an isolated Valyria (in the beginning at least) would not know of Ib or Westeros or Asshai and therefore not of the existence of dragons there.
- There is the Qartheen claim dragons were born from the second moon coming too close to the sun, leading to speculations of a cataclysmic event about meteors hitting Planetos and causing the Long Night (such as LmL’s), or even continental drift (Ser Jaemes).
- Ancient Asshai texts claim that dragons came from the Shadow. That a lost civilisation or people learned to tame them in the Shadow and then brought them to Valyria, teaching the Valyrians the arts. More, Asshai claims that even now there still are dragons in the Shadow. We do know at least, via Bran’s vision during his coma, before waking up, that dragons indeed still stir there.
In Asshai, the tales are many and confused, but certain texts—all impossibly ancient—claim that dragons first came from the Shadow, a place where all of our learning fails us. These Asshai’i histories say that a people so ancient they had no name first tamed dragons in the Shadow and brought them to Valyria, teaching the Valyrians their arts before departing from the annals. Yet if men in the Shadow had tamed dragons first, why did they not conquer as the Valyrians did? (tWoIaF – Ancient History: The Rise of Valyria)
[Bran] lifted his eyes and saw clear across the narrow sea, to the Free Cities and the green Dothraki sea and beyond, to Vaes Dothrak under its mountain, to the fabled lands of the Jade Sea, to Asshai by the Shadow, where dragons stirred beneath the sunrise.
While a hypothesis such as Ser Jaemes’s that a cataclysm broke the proto-Essos continent and sent Asshai, Dorne and Oldtown to drift away from what became the Valyrian peninsula could explain the opposing claims of where dragons first appeared, it would not necessarily explain how Valyrians learned to tame the dragons, especially since there are thousand to three thousand years between Valyria rising and the Long Night. There certainly are structures on Planetos in Asshai, Yi Ti, Lorath and Oldtown that predate Old Valyria and even Asshai’s knowledge, suggesting that there was an earlier advanced civilisation. So, let us for a moment entertain the notion that the Asshai claim that a people taught the Valyrians is true.
Maester Yandel’s critical question to downplay the Asshai claim is based on the assumption that anyone who knows how to tame dragons (or any civilisation) will want to conquer other people. We can dismiss the truth of that assumption based on real world history. While many civilisations would and did conquer and colonise others once they have the military means for it, some have not. Ancient dynastic China for example did not colonize for centuries on end, despite the fact they had superior armies and technologies. And despite all the alleged necromancing happening at Asshai, and shadowbinders being the most sinister, for thousands of years shadowbinders never have shown any interest to conquer anyone. In a way, Asshai is the magical university, like Oldtown is the anti-magical university – more interested in learning, experimenting and teaching, than conquering the world.
The question here should not be, “If this is true, then why did they not conquer Valyria?”, but
- “Why would they have wanted to gift dragons to Valyrians and teach the Valyrians how to tame the dragons?”,
- as well as “Why the Valyrians and not the Ghiscari?”
There might be several answers, but a likely candidate is that prophecy drove these people of the Shadow to teach the Valyrians. If prophecy drove Aegon V to try to hatch seven eggs at the birth celebration of Rhaegar, it could certainly drive people and seers to teach Valyrians how to tame and hatch dragon eggs. We have plenty of people in the present of the novels who can accurately predict and see events to come –
- Melisandre, Thoros and Benerro by looking into flames
- Ghost of High Heart, the woods witch, Jojen and Bran in green dreams
- Targaryens via dragon dreams
- Moonsingers
If they can do this now, there is no reason to doubt this could not have been done five thousand years ago. What is exceptional is that they could see thousands of years ahead in time. But they may not necessarily have known that themselves: only that at some point in the future these events would coalesce. And just like the woods witch could see from which specific Targaryens tPtwP would be born, there could have been seers who may have seen which type of people, the promised hero would be born from, namely Valyrians.
- If they were ancient shadowbinders, they may have seen the Valyrian looking Aerys and Rhaella in their visions and how they were dragonless, or may have seen that the promised hero would have Valyrian blood, and so they went in search of a people having those looks and stumbling upon them in the Valyrian peninsula. Note: I do not claim the seer saw AA as having Valyrian features, simply that one day AA would be born again from a people looking like Valyrians. This would explain why they picked the Valyrians and not for example Ghiscari.
- If they were an ancient lost people who knew how to tame dragons, they themselves might have had dragon dreams and even have been proto-Valyrians in appearance, who settled at the peninsula because the Fourteen Flames would guarantee a good environment to hatch eggs. Genetic drift in an isolated peninsula did the rest. The move would be then similar to Daenys the Dreamer Targaryen having foreseen the Doom and, upon her urging, the Targaryens moving to the island of Dragonstone where they ended up spreading their dragonriding genes with the Velaryons and amongst bastards. The lost people became Valyrians in a sense, as so many migrated historical people, explaining how they ended up being “lost”. The volcanoes would explain the choice of the location to resettle over say Old Ghis.
Noteworthy is that both origin claims regarding Asshai – dragons and the prophecy of Azor Ahai – somehow seem to go hand in hand. Even within the prophecy itself, dragons and the legend come together. This is true even with Aegon V’s efforts. He had people journey to Asshai to look for texts and knowledge on how to breed dragons.
The last years of Aegon’s reign were consumed by a search for ancient lore about the dragon breeding of Valyria, and it was said that Aegon commissioned journeys to places as far away as Asshai-by-the-Shadow with the hopes of finding texts and knowledge that had not been preserved in Westeros. (tWoIaF – The Targaryen Kings: Aegon V)
Aegon V at least seems to have put credence in the claim of Asshai.
The next question would be, “Did the Valyrians know of the prophecy, and specifically that it would be someone of Valyrian blood?” In order to try to answer this question, we must investigate whether the Valyrian society, their focus, social structure fits that of a people believing in the prophecy. Characters or people who know and believe a prophecy can respond in three ways:
- they promote events to happen, such as:
- Aegon V’s Summerhall actions
- Rhaegar training for warrior
- Daemon II Blackfyre coming to the Whitehall tourney in the Mystery Knight
- Aerion Brightflame drinking wildfire
- Melisandre’s Lightbringer theater, trying to make the dragon statues of Dragonstone become real
- they aim to prevent a prophecy from occuring, such as:
- Cersei Lannister trying to prevent the Valonqar prophecy from happening, but actually thereby likely ensuring it by making so many enemies;
- and Melisandre trying to prevent Stannis from losing the battle for King’s Landing by getting Renly killed with shadow magic, except Garlan wears Renly’s armor in alliance with Tywin and routing Stannis’s forces because of it.
- they accept it as inevitable and take actions to profit or survive:
- Daenys the Dreamer and her family move to Dragonstone
- The Brotherhood Without Banners
The World Book informs us that according to Septon Barth, the Valyrians had a prophecy that the gold of Casterly Rock would destroy them.
The wealth of the westerlands was matched, in ancient times, with the hunger of the Freehold of Valyria for precious metals, yet there seems no evidence that the dragonlords ever made contact with the lords of the Rock, Casterly or Lannister. Septon Barth speculated on the matter, referring to a Valyrian text that has since been lost, suggesting that the Freehold’s sorcerers foretold that the gold of Casterly Rock would destroy them. (tWoIaF – The Westerlands)
The cursed gold of Casterly RockThe Casterlys nor the Lannisters destroyed Old Valyria, but the Lannister gold did play a part in destroying the Targaryen dynasty. Jaime killed Aerys II while wearing his golden (well gilded) armor with his gilded sword, sat on the Iron Throne, with a helmet in the shape of a lion’s head.
 It is a very evocative image that Ned Stark describes here, with enough identifications there for sorcerers of Old Valyria to warn against dealing with the rulers of Casterly Rock if they saw this event as a prophesying vision. How else could Valyrians have attempted to prevent such a vision to come true? They could for example avoid having a singular Valyrian amongst them being king or emperors, despite their strong oppressive empirical tendencies. George compares Old Valyria to the Roman Republic. But Rome first was a kingdom, then a republic for less than five centuries, and eventually an empire with an emperor. Given the various dictatorial tendencies surfacing amongst almost each generation of Targaryens since Aegon conquered Westeros, even if it meant in-fighting with kindred who also rode dragons, it is hard to believe that no dragonrider amongst them never had dictatorial hopes, nor the personality to proclaim himself king or emperor in the four thousand years that followed after the Rise of Valyria. George is prone to the realism of such figures existing, trying and often succeeding in grabbing power. But a prophecy involving a Valyrian looking king would be murdered by Casterly Rock gold and the lords of Casterly Rock would seize (seemingly) the throne might have helped in this, especially when the surroundings and that king himself shows a decline of Valyrian culture – nineteen dragon skulls but no living one, an unkept madman, swords melded into a throne, inferior architecture.  So, that is an example on how we can relate a curious aspect of Old Valyria to prophecy related behavior – in the above case, to avoid a prophecy of coming true in particular. |
It follows that if a society behaves to prevent a certain foresight vision of coming about, they would also behave to help a prophecy along, like Melisandre attempts both. They are most famous as a scourge across Essos, conquering the whole continent and enslaving many various people. But what prompted them to do this? They did not make slaves to sell them and grow rich on coin with it. They used them to mine the Fourteen Flames.
The Valyrians learned one deplorable thing from the Ghiscari: slavery. The Ghiscari whom they conquered were the first to be thus enslaved, but not the last. The burning mountains of the Fourteen Flames were rich with ore, and the Valyrians hungered for it: copper and tin for the bronze of their weapons and monuments; later iron for the steel of their legendary blades; and always gold and silver to pay for it all. […] None can say how many perished, toiling in the Valyrian mines, but the number was so large as to surely defy comprehension. As Valyria grew, its need for ore increased, which led to ever more conquests to keep the mines stocked with slaves. The Valyrians expanded in all directions, stretching out east beyond the Ghiscari cities and west to the very shores of Essos, where even the Ghiscari had not made inroads. (tWoIaF – Ancient History: Valyria’s Children)
With the destruction of the Rhoynar, Valyria soon achieved complete domination of the western half of Essos, from the narrow sea to Slaver’s Bay, and from the Summer Sea to the Shivering Sea. Slaves poured into the Freehold and were quickly dispatched beneath the Fourteen Flames to mine the precious gold and silver the freeholders loved so well. (tWoIaF – Ancient History: The Doom of Valyria)
Mining for ore so extensively to maintain rule over an empire thatt large makes sense at first glance, well for an empire without dragons. But Valyria had several families with enough dragons for any of their major kindred. While they may have needed defense or standing armies to make sure the Freeholds remained suppressed, dragons and their riders could surely conquer cities swifter than armies could. Their mining seems weirdly excessive, while they had WMDs.
Initially they forged bronze swords, but eventually managed to forge steel and what is more magical Valyrian Steel.
The properties of Valyrian steel are well-known, and are the result of both folding iron many times to balance and remove impurities, and the use of spells—or at least arts we do not know—to give unnatural strength to the resulting steel. Those arts are now lost, though the smiths of Qohor claim to still know magics for reworking Valyriansteel without losing its strength or unsurpassed ability to hold an edge. The Valyrian steel blades that remain in the world might number in the thousands, but in the Seven Kingdoms there are only 227 such weapons according to Archmaester Thurgood’s Inventories, some of which have since been lost or have disappeared from the annals of history. (tWoIaF – Ancient History: Valyria’s Children)
Even now, after the Doom, their magically crafted Valyrian Steel, remains a sought after legacy. While I do suspect the “magic” is actually using Valyrian dragonrider bone coal to carbonize the steel enough with extra iron (from the dragonrider’s bones), and why Valyrian practice the burning of their dead, it cannot be denied that the Valyrians had highly specialised armorers experimenting with techniques and apparently spells.
To me the combo of excessive mining and forging “magical” swords sounds like a society striving to forge a new Lightbringer sword themselves.
And finally there are the Rh’llorists. Their religion is that of a dualistic fire god, Rh’llor or Lord of Light versus the Great Other, or Soul of Ice. This is not a Valyrian religion in origin, since the Valyrians had a pantheon of gods they named their dragons after, such as Balerion, Meraxes, Vhagar and Syrax. Or rather, perhaps their dragons were their gods. Beyond that they tolerated other religions and promoted this tolerance and did not seem to care what religion the commoners or slaves followed. They even allowed certain religions to set up a Freehold away from the peninsula to practice their religion away from others, such as Norvos and Lorath. However, a people riding dragons and having their capital amidst fourteen volcanoes would logically attract Rh’llorists. Believing in the prophecy of Azor Ahai they would have expected such a hero to be born there. They may have temples in every city of Essos, but the largest one after the Doom is at Volantis, the last city where Volantene nobility claims the most noble blood surviving from Old Valyria. Nor would they have been silent about their beliefs. One of their features is their habbit to clamor about Azor Ahai whenever they can. They might be the source on how Valyrians would have learned of the prophecy, if not their own dragon dreams, sorcerers or teachers did.
So, while none of these are confirming evidence, we do see a society that seems to act and make choices in support of the prophecy, or in an effort to bring it about. They would have had multiple sources for the prophecy – their own dragon dreams, the potential teachers from Asshai and the Red Priests. And the main written material on the prophecy would have been written in High Valyrian, which was the main language from Pentos to Asshai.
Since they had no kings, they also would not have had princes nor princesses. Any such title would have been a loan word from a people in Essos they destroyed and enslaved, and not something they would have applied to themselves if they believed the prophesied hero would be born amongst them. Prince is a word that the Targaryens adopted from the Common Tongue of Westeros after Aegon I conquered Westeros and proclaimed himself King of all Westeros. So, what would old Valyrians have called themselves in High Valyrian to distinguish themselves from the Valyrian smallfolk and non-dragonriding nobility? What do Targaryens call themselves? Dragons! In High Valyrian the prophecy of tPtwP would be the Dragon that was Promised.
Some readers erronously claim that none of the High Valyrian words have no gender. This leads to plenty of speculations on the High Valyrian word Valonqar being a female character, a little sister, instead of little brother. But there is no evidence for that whatsoever. The quote by Aemon regarding the translation mistake solely arguments that dragons are considered as genderless! And thus that the word dragon is genderless. Since Aemon mentions the genderless dragons directly after his proclamation that the error crept in the translation, this implies that the High Valyrian word dragon was translated to the Common Tongue prince, after Aegon’s conquest, for the simple reason that any dragons left were Targaryens, and the Targaryens of significance were princes. And of course the presumption that the Dragon that was Promised would be male would precede the Targaryen dynasty amongst Valyrians, because the legendary Azor Ahai is supposed to be male.
So, the prophecy title should actually be the Dragon that was Promised. We know this Dragon must have Targaryen blood, and that the dragons has three heads.
“There must be one more,” [Rhaegar] said, though whether he was speaking to her [Dany] or the woman in the bed she could not say. “The dragon has three heads.” (aCoK, Daenerys IV)
The prophecy therefore is the three-headed Dragon that was Promised. Hence, I personally believe that Azor Ahai is a triad of people with Targaryen blood: Dany, Aegon and Jon. Each of them will fulfill part of the prophecy literally, and the rest metaphorically. For example,
- Aegon was conceived when a red bleeding star (comet) streaked the sky,
- Dany hatched dragons from petrified eggs,
- and then Jon would wield the sword Lightbringer.
It does not mean that they will not fulfill the other requirements, but will do so metaphorically. Dany cannot be said to have been born beneath the comet, but she did have a type of rebirth experience. When Jon survives/returns from the assassination attempt, he will have been reborn metaphorically beneath a red bleeding star, or the ripped and bleeding Patrek of King’s Mountain who wears a blue star on his chest. When Dany rides Drogon and has him burn stuff on her command, she wields a type of Lightbringer. In the case of Aegon he might end up waking the dragon within Dany, and thus in Viserys’s meaning, etc…
Anyhow, since the word princess/prince is a translation from the High Valyrian word for dragon, whenever someone calls Dany princess, we should read this as her understanding it to mean dragon, for Valyrian is the language she is actually most familiar with. You will see how correcting this “translation error” throughout the text from the get go makes the underlying meaning more clear, or will fit better with her behavior and choices in later events, once she has hatched, than the image we have in our head when we read the word princess in Dany’s chapters.
I will show you with the quotes from her first chapter in aGoT,
“A gift from the Magister Illyrio,” Viserys said, smiling. Her brother was in a high mood tonight. “The color will bring out the violet in your eyes. And you shall have gold as well, and jewels of all sorts. Illyrio has promised. Tonight you must look like a princess.”
A [dragon], Dany thought. She had forgotten what that was like. Perhaps she had never really known. (aGoT, Daenerys I)
I did not translate Viserys’s use of the word princess here, because the dress-up reveals that Viserys means princess in the classic way. By translating the word princess into dragon here, we can see how it stirs her soul, and to the prophecy about the Dragon to be born again, but not sure anymore how it feels to hatch into a human body once more.
“Now you look all a princess,” the girl said breathlessly when they were done. Dany glanced at her image in the silvered looking glass that Illyrio had so thoughtfully provided. A [dragon], she thought, but she remembered what the girl had said, how Khal Drogo was so rich even his slaves wore golden collars. She felt a sudden chill, and gooseflesh pimpled her bare arms. (aGoT, Daenerys I)
The dresser means princess in the conventional way of course, but when we translate Dany’s use of the word in thought to dragon, we now can compare her fear of being sold and ending up a chained and enslaved dragon.
Finally, when we translate princess into dragon when the eunuch sings her announcement, we fully have the fitting birthing song of a dragon about to be born from a stone egg.
Beneath an arch of twining stone leaves, a eunuch sang their coming. “Viserys of the House Targaryen, the Third of his Name,” he called in a high, sweet voice, “King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm. His sister, Daenerys Stormborn, [Dragon] of Dragonstone. His honorable host, Illyrio Mopatis, Magister of the Free City of Pentos.” (aGoT, Daenerys I)
The Hatching of Dany the Dragon (aGoT, Daenerys II)
Hah, you likely expected I would analyse Dany’s dragon dream in the Dreamtime section! No, because Dany’s dreams do not occur until just before she actually hatches, at her wedding. First, I will show you why I regard her wedding as Dany’s actual hatching.
There are various names for the stages of growth for dragons. A hatchling is a newly born to young dragon that cannot yet survive or hunt on its own. Dany’s dragons are hatchlings up until the end of aCoK.
The dragons were no larger than the scrawny cats she had once seen skulking along the walls of Magister Illyrio’s estate in Pentos . . . until they unfolded their wings. (aCoK, Daenerys I)
Dany has been to places. She visited all the Free Cities. There would be scrawny cats in Tyrosh, Myr, Braavos and Volantis too. And yet, Dany specifically thinks of Illyrio’s estate in Pentos, or rather the outside of the estate’s walls. George therefore refers to the wedding chapter of Dany, that takes place outside of Pentosi walls and where Dany also unfolds her wings for the first time.
Daenerys Targaryen wed Khal Drogo with fear and barbaric splendor in a field beyond the walls of Pentos, for the Dothraki believed that all things of importance in a man’s life must be done beneath the open sky. (aGoT, Daenerys II)
The Bride Gifts
George describes Dany’s dragons in aCoK as neck, tail and wing, with their wings the most notable feature, including the dragonbones in them.
Their [wing] span was three times their length, each wing a delicate fan of translucent skin, gorgeously colored, stretched taut between long thin bones. When you looked hard, you could see that most of their body was neck, tail, and wing. (aCoK, Daenerys I)
At Dany’s wedding, she is gifted with tail, teeth, dragonbone and wings.
The khal’s bloodriders offered her the traditional three weapons, and splendid weapons they were. Haggo gave her a great leather whip with a silver handle, Cohollo a magnificent arakh chased in gold, and Qotho a double-curved dragonbone bow taller than she was. (aGoT, Daenerys II)
In other words, I’m saying here that a whip acts like Dany’s dragon tail; that arakhs are her teeth, while the the bows are her dragonbones and the arrows shot from it are her firepower. I will show you with quotes from later chapters in subsections, but first I simply wish to give you an overall picture, before I show you the many quotes for each weapon to plead my case.
You might argue, Dany is not meant to carry or even wield these weapons personally, and instead she has to pass the gifts onto her husband. This is true, for now. Regardless of that argument, they are initially given to her and not Drogo directly. More, after Drogo’s death, Dany claims these specific gifts as hers, and her khas do not protest against her keeping them.
On the platform they piled Khal Drogo’s treasures: his great tent, his painted vests, his saddles and harness, the whip his father had given him when he came to manhood, the arakh he had used to slay Khal Ogo and his son, a mighty dragonbone bow. Aggo would have added the weapons Drogo’s bloodriders had given Dany for bride gifts as well, but she forbade it. “Those are mine,” she told him, “and I mean to keep them.” (aGoT, Daenerys X)
Finally, her silver serves for her wings.
She was a young filly, spirited and splendid. Dany knew just enough about horses to know that this was no ordinary animal. There was something about her that took the breath away. She was grey as the winter sea, with a mane like silver smoke. Hesitantly she reached out and stroked the horse’s neck, ran her fingers through the silver of her mane. Khal Drogo said something in Dothraki and Magister Illyrio translated. “Silver for the silver of your hair, the khal says.” (aGoT, Daenerys II)
This becomes quite clear during Dany’s first ride on her silver then and there. Dany unfolds her wings in that ride.
The silver-grey filly moved with a smooth and silken gait, and the crowd parted for her, every eye upon them. Dany found herself moving faster than she had intended, yet somehow it was exciting rather than terrifying. The horse broke into a trot, and she smiled. Dothraki scrambled to clear a path. The slightest pressure with her legs, the lightest touch on the reins, and the filly responded. She sent it into a gallop, and now the Dothraki were hooting and laughing and shouting at her as they jumped out of her way. As she turned to ride back, a firepit loomed ahead, directly in her path. They were hemmed in on either side, with no room to stop. A daring she had never known filled Daenerys then, and she gave the filly her head. The silver horse leapt the flames as if she had wings. When she pulled up before Magister Illyrio, she said, “Tell Khal Drogo that he has given me the wind.” (aGoT, Daenerys II)
While Illyrio and Visery considered Dany but a fearful, furtive thing, her true joy for adventure and excitement reveals itself during her first ride on her silver. Anyone who has ever ridden horse and enjoyed it knows how exciting it can be, especially the moment the horse alters from trot into gallop, and the sensation is certainly worthy to wax poetic about wings and wind. By itself horseriding does not make a dragon’s wings. Arya is a fan of horseriding for example, but she is no dragon.Nor does she Arya jump across a firepit or leap the flames on horseback. Within the context of fire and flames, the mention of wings implies dragon wings, silver dragon wings in this case.
Remember how I argued earlier that princess = dragon? This becomes quite evident when we have Dany telling us in the third chapter that she first felt like a princess since riding her silver.
The descent was steep and rocky, but Dany rode fearlessly, and the joy and the danger of it were a song in her heart. All her life Viserys had told her she was a princess, but not until she rode her silver had Daenerys Targaryen ever felt like one. (aGoT, Daenerys III)
That quote without the preceding descent of a steep and rocky slope, taken out of the context with what Dany is actually wearing or how she rides her silver the first time, might make you insist that she is a princess on a horse, rather than a dragon with silver invisible wings. The word princess is so strongly connotated to certain looks and behaviour, that we easily imagine Dany riding stately on her silver in her wedding dress, like the left image, or the way the show portrayed it.
While a beautiful image that matches our preconceptoins on how a princess rides a horse, this is a false image. Unlike the show, the books tell us of a daring young woman jumping the flames of a firepit in her wedding dress, like the right image by Veronica V. Jones. How jarring it is to our expectations is evidenced by the scene that was filmed for the disastrous pilot with Dany riding her silver with brevity. As a consequence, the original wedding scene was rewritten to fit it more to the viewer’s mental expectation. Sure, it does not fit the image we have in our head, but perhaps we should abandon that picture and adjust it to what actually happened. The left erronous mental image is that of a classic princess. The right is that of a princess where princess means dragon.
“All her life Viserys had told her she was a [dragon], but not until she rode her silver had Daenerys Targaryen ever felt like one.”
This becomes an even more fitting image, in the context of Dany descending the steep and rocky slope into the grasses of the Dothraki Sea in her leather khaleesi garb, such as her painted vest.
Unfortunately, the fanart that depicts a non-pregnant, Dany just on her silver in khaleesi garb (without her dragons added to it) is almost non-existent. Because the word princess does not jive in the fan’s mind with what is actually happening, the majority of fanart superimposes the stereotype of the princess image and behavior onto the horseriding. So, for those who love to draft fanart of just Dany on her silver – please abandon the classic princess image.
She was barefoot, with oiled hair, wearing Dothraki riding leathers and a painted vest given her as a bride gift. She looked as though she belonged here. (aGoT, Daenerys III)
Oiled, leathery and a painted vest. Together the khaleesi costume make for a hatchling’s leathery smooth skin and scales.
Dany marveled at the smoothness of their scales, […] (aCoK, Daenerys I)
Born amidst salt and smoke
Now, how do I know the wedding ceremony during the gifting is the actual hatching scene? First, we have Dany’s salty tears.
Dany had never felt so alone as she did seated in the midst of that vast horde. Her brother had told her to smile, and so she smiled until her face ached and the tears came unbidden to her eyes. She did her best to hide them, knowing how angry Viserys would be if he saw her crying, terrified of how Khal Drogo might react. (aGoT, Daenerys II)
Then look at the description of her silver again.
She was grey as the winter sea, with a mane like silver smoke. (aGoT, Daenerys II)
The sea is also salt water, but more interestingly her silver looks like smoke. We have our combo of salt and smoke! So, the gifting at the wedding is a rebirth scene of Dany into the prophesied dragon, albeit a hatchling! After all, her silver is a filly, not a mare yet.
“What about the eggs!” you ask? “You skipped the eggs! Do they not signal that at least she is already a dragon at fertile age?”
Magister Illyrio murmured a command, and four burly slaves hurried forward, bearing between them a great cedar chest bound in bronze. When she opened it, she found piles of the finest velvets and damasks the Free Cities could produce … and resting on top, nestled in the soft cloth, three huge eggs. Dany gasped. They were the most beautiful things she had ever seen, each different than the others, patterned in such rich colors that at first she thought they were crusted with jewels, and so large it took both of her hands to hold one. She lifted it delicately, expecting that it would be made of some fine porcelain or delicate enamel, or even blown glass, but it was much heavier than that, as if it were all of solid stone. The surface of the shell was covered with tiny scales, and as she turned the egg between her fingers, they shimmered like polished metal in the light of the setting sun. One egg was a deep green, with burnished bronze flecks that came and went depending on how Dany turned it. Another was pale cream streaked with gold. The last was black, as black as a midnight sea, yet alive with scarlet ripples and swirls. […] “Dragon’s eggs, from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai,” said Magister Illyrio. “The eons have turned them to stone, yet still they burn bright with beauty.” (aGoT, Daenerys II)
No, the eggs being gifted in Dany’s scene being reborn as a dragon is not a contradiction. Women and female animals are born with their eggs intact already. They are all already there, waiting until menarch and they start to ripen. This even means that a woman pregnant of the foetus of her daughter already carries half of the genetic material of her grandchildren within her, via that daughter.
Together with the salty tears and silver-smoke manes of her silver, the egg gift is the completed image of “born again amidst salt and smoke to wake dragons from stone”, since Dany is reborn as dragon with dragon eggs amidst salty tears and smokey manes.
This hatching event of Dany herself is why George has Dany recite to herself that she is the blood of the dragon over and over in this chapter, but not her first chapter.
So she sat in her wedding silks, nursing a cup of honeyed wine, afraid to eat, talking silently to herself. I am blood of the dragon, she told herself. I am Daenerys Stormborn, [Dragon] of Dragonstone, of the blood and seed of Aegon the Conqueror. […] I am the blood of the dragon, she told herself again. […] “I am the blood of the dragon,” she whispered aloud as she followed, trying to keep her courage up. “I am the blood of the dragon. I am the blood of the dragon.” The dragon was never afraid. (aGoT, Daenerys II)
It is like George is hammering it into our minds – Dany is a dragon!
Dany’s Dragon Dreams
Now, we finally can discuss her dream. Readers and the wiki of ice and fire, claim the dreams that Dany has in chapter two and three are prophetic in nature about hatching the eggs by the end of the novel, or the eggs instructing or influencing Dany. I think this interpretation overlooks certain issues and oversimplifies it. As prophetic dream it fails to show Dany hatching three dragons. And certainly the first dream is problematic as the eggs instructing her, since she does not even have received the eggs then.
- The first dream is included in the wedding chapter, which is a rebirthing event of Dany into a dragon.
- The second chapter is not even chronologically written. It starts with telling us that it is her wedding day, that it takes place outside the city walls, then goes back in time to reveal to us she had the dragon dream, and then jumps ahead again to the wedding events. This especially points out that the dream by itself has meaning to the wedding/rebirth chapter.
- dragons in dreams often tend to represent a Targaryen
There are no more dragons, Dany thought, staring at her brother, though she did not dare say it aloud. Yet that night she dreamt of one. Viserys was hitting her, hurting her. She was naked, clumsy with fear. She ran from him, but her body seemed thick and ungainly. He struck her again. She stumbled and fell. “You woke the dragon,” he screamed as he kicked her. “You woke the dragon, you woke the dragon.” Her thighs were slick with blood. She closed her eyes and whimpered. As if in answer, there was a hideous ripping sound and the crackling of some great fire. When she looked again, Viserys was gone, great columns of flame rose all around, and in the midst of them was the dragon. It turned its great head slowly. When its molten eyes found hers, she woke, shaking and covered with a fine sheen of sweat. She had never been so afraid … (aGoT, Daenerys II)
On the one hand we have Dany being portrayed here as pregnant and birthing a dragon from her body. Especially this is what seems to imply that Dany will birth a beastly dragon. Since she does eventually ends up hatching dragons from her eggs, people stop looking for any other meaning, and wave off inconsistencies as dream-weirdness they can make head nor tail off. But that is giving up on the explanation. In other words, once we recognize that Dany hatches into a dragon at her wedding ceremony, a potential interpretation can be that the dragon Dany births in the dream is herself – a dragon in spirit.
Which brings me to her second dream a chapter later.
Yet when she slept that night, she dreamt the dragon dream again. Viserys was not in it this time. There was only her and the dragon. Its scales were black as night, wet and slick with blood. Her blood, Dany sensed. Its eyes were pools of molten magma, and when it opened its mouth, the flame came roaring out in a hot jet. She could hear it singing to her. She opened her arms to the fire, embraced it, let it swallow her whole, let it cleanse her and temper her and scour her clean. She could feel her flesh sear and blacken and slough away, could feel her blood boil and turn to steam, and yet there was no pain. She felt strong and new and fierce. And the next day, strangely, she did not seem to hurt quite so much. It was as if the gods had heard her and taken pity. (aGoT, Daenerys III)
Since we understand that Dany has long hatched into a dragon, while Viserys is not a true dragon, it is only logical her second dream does not feature him anymore.
She dreams this dream on the long journey to the Dothraki Sea, somewhere between Pentos and Norvos. The physical ordeal of riding horse every day for a full day, along with the impersonal and rough sexual relation with Drogo she has on top of it takes her to the brink of despair. It is not unusual for a person to have a spiritual experience when they reach the pit … You either discover your resilience or … you don’t. This dream directly acts like Dany finding her resilience. The day after this dream, her body hurt less. Her continued strengtening and enjoyment of the lands and environments she crosses, including the Dothraki Sea, follows from this dream.
Visually we get hints that the dragon in this dream is the same one as the first dream. It is still slick with Dany’s blood after birthing it in her first dream. The text emphasises it is her blood, and not just the blood sticking to the dragon. As a stand alone sentence, it implies that the dragon = her blood. In other words the dragon is Dany herself. It is black-red, because Dany has the blood of the Targaryen dragon.
Some readers think that because the black-and-scarlet dragon egg is warm to the touch the next morning, that it might have been the dragon dreaming inside the egg communicating with her, supporting her, instructing her.
She touched one [of the dragon eggs], the largest of the three, running her hand lightly over the shell. Black-and-scarlet, she thought, like the dragon in my dream. The stone felt strangely warm beneath her fingers … or was she still dreaming? She pulled her hand back nervously. (aGoT, Daenerys III)
But since we have details linking the dragon in her second dream to the first and Dany dreamt the first before being given the eggs that is a problematic interpretation. So, how did the egg end up feeling warm?
The rebirth event at her wedding is of importance here. I already pointed out that females are born with all of their eggs in their ovaries. They are not manufactured during their lifetime. A female’s eggs only need to ripen. Magically, the gift of the dragon eggs at Dany’s wedding – which was a rebirth event of Dany as a dragon – are like Dany’s ovary eggs. So, when the dream-dragon enflames Dany, by extension so are her ovary eggs, which are her dragon eggs. Since the dream-dragon is Dany herself, she heated her own body while dreaming, and that is why the dragon eggs are warm to the touch the next day.
This interpretation we can test to later egg-related events. For example, when Dany gets emotionally fired up, or hot and bothered, then the dragon eggs would feel warm as well. In her third chapter we have Dany’s first confrontation with Viserys. While it is not explicitly stated that she feels rage or anger in that scene, her instinctive response follows from a righteous rage of being assaulted and she is angry enough to want to teach Viserys a lesson by taking his horse away. Moreover, Jorah referencing Dany as child several times also enflames her. She is so hot and bothered by the events of the day, she races faster and faster. And thus when she arrives back at her tent with the khalasar, she finds the eggs warm once more.
“I am no child,” she told him fiercely. Her heels pressed into the sides of her mount, rousing the silver to a gallop. Faster and faster she raced, leaving Jorah and Irri and the others far behind, the warm wind in her hair and the setting sun red on her face. By the time she reached the khalasar, it was dusk. […] As she let the door flap close behind her, Dany saw a finger of dusty red light reach out to touch her dragon’s eggs across the tent. For an instant a thousand droplets of scarlet flame swam before her eyes. She blinked, and they were gone. […] She put her palm against the black egg, fingers spread gently across the curve of the shell. The stone was warm. Almost hot. (aGoT, Daenerys III)
Notice that the droplets of scarlet flame swimming before her eyes fits with the wordplay of rage and anger. We say that enraged people see blood or red before their eyes. You may even have experienced this sensation during a debate yourself. Except, you are not a dragon and have no dragon eggs.
Meanwhile, after the assassination attempt, Dany aims to hatch the dragon eggs by heating them in a brazier. But this method does nothing.
The Usurper has woken the dragon now, she told herself … and her eyes went to the dragon’s eggs resting in their nest of dark velvet. The shifting lamplight limned their stony scales, and shimmering motes of jade and scarlet and gold swam in the air around them, like courtiers around a king. Was it madness that seized her then, born of fear? Or some strange wisdom buried in her blood? Dany could not have said. She heard her own voice saying, “Ser Jorah, light the brazier.” […] When the coals were afire, Dany sent Ser Jorah from her. She had to be alone to do what she must do. This is madness, she told herself as she lifted the black-and-scarlet egg from the velvet. It will only crack and burn, and it’s so beautiful, Ser Jorah will call me a fool if I ruin it, and yet, and yet … Cradling the egg with both hands, she carried it to the fire and pushed it down amongst the burning coals. The black scales seemed to glow as they drank the heat. Flames licked against the stone with small red tongues. Dany placed the other two eggs beside the black one in the fire. As she stepped back from the brazier, the breath trembled in her throat. She watched until the coals had turned to ashes. Drifting sparks floated up and out of the smokehole. Heat shimmered in waves around the dragon’s eggs. And that was all. (aGoT, Daenerys VI)
And then Dany succeeds by the end of aGoT. While it is by no means the sole reason that the dragon eggs hatch, one of the crucial features is that Dany steps close enough to the raging pyre that it burns off her hair.
She had sensed the truth of it long ago, Dany thought as she took a step closer to the conflagration, but the brazier had not been hot enough. The flames writhed before her like the women who had danced at her wedding, whirling and singing and spinning their yellow and orange and crimson veils, fearsome to behold, yet lovely, so lovely, alive with heat. Dany opened her arms to them, her skin flushed and glowing. This is a wedding, too, she thought. […] Another step, and Dany could feel the heat of the sand on the soles of her feet, even through her sandals. Sweat ran down her thighs and between her breasts and in rivulets over her cheeks, where tears had once run. […] Her vest had begun to smolder, so Dany shrugged it off and let it fall to the ground. The painted leather burst into sudden flame as she skipped closer to the fire, her breasts bare to the blaze, streams of milk flowing from her red and swollen nipples. Now, she thought, now, and for an instant she glimpsed Khal Drogo before her, mounted on his smoky stallion, a flaming lash in his hand. He smiled, and the whip snaked down at the pyre, hissing. She heard a crack, the sound of shattering stone. (aGoT, Daenerys X)
Dany thinks initially that the amount of heat makes the difference, but we know that even Summerhall’s wildfire was not enough. So, while a big fire may be important, it is not crucial for success. We do see that when fully Dany joins the fire and heat, when she lets it wash over her, like in the second dream, the eggs finally hatch, amidst the salt of Dany’s sweat and the smoke of the pyre.
Not so incidentally, Dany refers to her successful hatching attempt as a wedding, even though it is far from a wedding. So, George points the reader to the wedding chapter and understand what happened there: Dany hatched as a Targaryen dragon during her wedding, and so the hatching event of the dragons is referred to as a wedding. Does that mean dragons can only be hatched during weddings? No, of course not. It simply means that both Dany’s wedding and the pyre include a hatching of a dragon. Does that mean that Drogo is a crucial component here? Not as Drogo necessarily, nor as husband.
What else do Danny’s wedding and the burial have in common? A dragonbone bow, arakh and whip are laid on the pyre. These are Drogo’s in the burial case.
On the platform they piled Khal Drogo’s treasures: his great tent, his painted vests, his saddles and harness, the whip his father had given him when he came to manhood, the arakh he had used to slay Khal Ogo and his son, a mighty dragonbone bow. (aGoT, Daenerys X)
And then there is one more commonality – the dead. The hint that dragons hatch via the dead or dying is given through the bloodflies.
Dany watched the flies. They were as large as bees, gross, purplish, glistening. The Dothraki called them bloodflies. They lived in marshes and stagnant pools, sucked blood from man and horse alike, and laid their eggs in the dead and dying. (aGoT, Daenerys VIII)
Bloodflies combine the concept of blood and flying. And they have a purplish color. While fire is not part of these concepts, it does fit with a Targaryen dragon, who cannot truly breathe fire personally. And their eggs hatch in the dead or dying.
During Dany’s wedding Dothraki are dropping like flies (pun intended).
Magister Illyrio had warned Dany about this too. “A Dothraki wedding without at least three deaths is deemed a dull affair,” he had said. Her wedding must have been especially blessed; before the day was over, a dozen men had died. (aGoT, Daenerys II)
And how many dead do we have before the hatching of the dragons in Dany’s last chapter in aGoT? Dany’s khas Quaro; Drogo’s kos Qotho, Cohollo and Haggo; Dany’s child Rhaego, her slave Eroeh, her husband Drogo, his red stallion and finally Mirri Maz Duur. Together they make 8-9. And where does Dany place the eggs? Strewn about Drogo’s body.
She climbed the pyre herself to place the eggs around her sun-and-stars. The black beside his heart, under his arm. The green beside his head, his braid coiled around it. The cream-and-gold down between his legs. (aGoT, Daenerys X)
She suffocated Drogo with a pillow herself, to hatch, like a purple bloodfly does.
Dany compares cinders from the pyre to newborn fireflies.
Huge orange gouts of fire unfurled their banners in that hellish wind, the logs hissing and cracking, glowing cinders rising on the smoke to float away into the dark like so many newborn fireflies. (aGoT, Daenerys X)
Though named differently by Dany during the burial pyre as fireflies, it is clear that GRRM is referring to an anology of hatched bloodflies. Because next, Dany compares flames to the women dancing at her wedding. It were those dancing women the Dothraki fought and killed one another over during her wedding.
The flames writhed before her like the women who had danced at her wedding, whirling and singing and spinning their yellow and orange and crimson veils, fearsome to behold, yet lovely, so lovely, alive with heat. (aGoT, Daenerys X)
So, the recipe during Dany’s wedding to hatch Dany’s dragon blood is the recipe we see reappear at the end of the first novel when the eggs truly hatch (an event that Dany compares to a wedding), that and Dany’s own body heat. The recipe seems to be:
- at least 3 dead
- the gift of dragonbone with the bow, a symbolical dragontail with the whip and teeth with the arakh
- a horse for wings
- extreme heat
- a hatched female Targaryen stepping in that extreme heat and surviving it
Now, I am not claiming that every hatching of a dragon egg requires this recipe. Wild dragons managed to be born without any Targaryen’s help. Plenty of Targaryen dragon eggs hatched without such rituals. Before the Targaryen dragons died out, female beastly dragons who managed to produce their own firepower and therefore heat would have been enough. The sole she-dragon who failed at hatching the clutch of eggs would have been the last dragon. Why she could not, I will explain in the third essay.
The Dragon that Mounts the World
While I have provided evidence how GRRM points out that Dany’s silver functions as Dany’s wings, I have only so far claimed that the other Dothraki weapons stand for other dragon parts of the body without providing textual evidence or hints for this. In this section I will select certain scenes to show you that indeed Dany has her own tail, teeth, claws, firepower and even belly. These features of a dragon are not only present at her wedding, but persist and grow over time. After all, a dragon starts out as a hatchling, then becomes a draken, next a full grown dragon, and in Dany’s case one so sizable it can mount the world.
The Wingspan
Initially, Dany starts out with a filly, perfect for a hatchling, but Dany’s silver grows in time into a mare as Dany herself matures.
She called her people together and mounted her silver mare. (aCoK, Daenerys I)
The Dothraki would esteem her all the more for a few bells in her hair. She chimed as she mounted her silver mare, and again with every stride, but neither Ser Jorah nor her bloodriders made mention of it. (aCoK, Daenerys V)
As you notice, Dany’s silver is only called a mare from a Clash of Kings onwards. Dany’s dragons may only be hatchlings then, but Dany is a draken by then. It is not just her silver growing into a mare that signifies Dany’s growth as dragon. Her khas are blood of her blood, and therefore a “bodily” extension of Dany.
The men of her khas came up behind [Jorah]. Jhogo was the first to lay his arakh at her feet. “Blood of my blood,” he murmured, pushing his face to the smoking earth. “Blood of my blood,” she heard Aggo echo. “Blood of my blood,” Rakharo shouted. (aGoT, Daenerys X)
No, Dany thought. I have four. The rest are women, old sick men, and boys whose hair has never been braided. (aCoK, Daenerys I)
“Make way, you Milk Men, make way for the Mother of Dragons,” Jhogo cried, and the Qartheen moved aside, though perhaps the oxen had more to do with that than his voice. Through the swaying draperies, Dany caught glimpses of him astride his grey stallion. From time to time he gave one of the oxen a flick with the silver-handled whip she had given him. Aggo guarded on her other side, while Rakharo rode behind the procession, watching the faces in the crowd for any sign of danger. (aCoK, Daenerys III)
And as you notice, Jhogo is said to ride a grey stallion, while wielding the silver-handed whip. Both the grey and silver are a visual extension of Dany’s silver. And since Dany sends her khas in all directions, they represent the four wind directions and are a first step to that dragon mounting the world.
By the end of aCoK though, Dany counts a khalasar of hundred, beyond her khas, and three ships that Illyrio sent her.
Joy bloomed in her heart, but Dany kept it from her face. “I have three dragons,” she said, “and more than a hundred in my khalasar, with all their goods and horses.”
“It is no matter,” boomed Belwas. “We take all. The fat man hires three ships for his little silverhair queen.”
[…]
Three heads has the dragon, Dany thought, wondering. “I shall tell my people to make ready to depart at once. But the ships that bring me home must bear different names.” […] “Vhagar,” Daenerys told him. “Meraxes. And Balerion. Paint the names on their hulls in golden letters three feet high, Arstan. I want every man who sees them to know the dragons are returned.” (aCoK, Daenerys V)
In other words, I’m saying that the people guarding her, fighting for her represent part of her dragon body, while the horses and vessels carrying them are the wings. Although this should be nuanced. A ship serves as Dany’s wings as long as it has sails. And there is but one ship that has sails – Balerion.
[…], two of the ships that Magister Illyrio had sent after her were trading galleys, with two hundred oars apiece and crews of strong-armed oarsmen to row them. But the great cog Balerion was a song of a different key; a ponderous broad-beamed sow of a ship with immense holds and huge sails, but helpless in a calm. (aSoS, Daenerys I)
The ship with sails, is compared to Balerion and a sow. Balerion is a black dragon, like the dragon in Dany’s second dream. A sow is a noun used to indicate a female animal.
The captain appeared at her elbow. “Would that this Balerion could soar as her namesake did, Your Grace,” he said in bastard Valyrian heavily flavored with accents of Pentos. “Then we should not need to row, nor tow, nor pray for wind.” (aSoS, Daenerys I)
So, Dany’s dragon size at the start of aSoS is that of the cog.
Dany referenced the three heads of the dragon in connection to the ships. Since, other two ships have no sails, this implies there are two wingless dragons. If they are wingless, this likely implies unhatched dragons. Notice too that Dany’s song has a different key than these two.
Initially, Dany aims to sail for Pentos, but ends up becalmed. Even though the galleys can pull the cog it goes only creepily slow. This is comparable to Dany trying to use Drogon’s wings to return to Meereen from the Dothraki Sea in her last chapter of aDwD, but Drogon refusing to do so.
The wood and the canvas had served her well enough so far, but the fickle wind had turned traitor. For six days and six nights they had been becalmed, and now a seventh day had come, and still no breath of air to fill their sails. (aSoS, Daenerys I)
She would sooner have returned to Meereen on dragon’s wings, to be sure. But that was a desire Drogon did not seem to share. (aDwD, Daenerys X)
Dany persists to return to Meereen from the Dothraki Sea on her own two feet, a slow going venture, as much as the two galleys attempt to pull the heavy Balerion.
Vhagar and Meraxes had let out lines to tow her, but it made for painfully slow going. (aSoS, Daenerys I)
As she walked, she tapped her thigh with the pitmaster’s whip. That, and the rags on her back, were all she had taken from Meereen. (aDwD, Daenerys X)
Only when she starts to contemplate the danger in pursuing the route for Pentos in aSoS does the wind pick up again.
Magister Illyrio had sent him to guard her, or so Belwas claimed, and it was true that she needed guarding. The Usurper on his Iron Throne had offered land and lordship to any man who killed her. One attempt had been made already, with a cup of poisoned wine. The closer she came to Westeros, the more likely another attack became. […] In time, the dragons would be her most formidable guardians, just as they had been for Aegon the Conqueror and his sisters three hundred years ago. Just now, though, they brought her more danger than protection. In all the world there were but three living dragons, and those were hers; they were a wonder, and a terror, and beyond price.
She was pondering her next words when she felt a cool breath on the back of her neck, and a loose strand of her silver-gold hair stirred against her brow. Above, the canvas creaked and moved, and suddenly a great cry went up from all over Balerion. “Wind!” the sailors shouted. “The wind returns, the wind!” Dany looked up to where the great cog’s sails rippled and belled as the lines thrummed and tightened and sang the sweet song they had missed so for six long days. (aSoS, Daenerys I)
Of course, once she conquers Slaver’s Bay overland, she has to exchange the ship back for horses to represent her wings.
Poor Groleo. He still grieved for his ship, she knew. If a war galley could ram another ship, why not a gate? That had been her thought when she commanded the captains to drive their ships ashore. Their masts had become her battering rams, and swarms of freedmen had torn their hulls apart to build mantlets, turtles, catapults, and ladders. The sellswords had given each ram a bawdy name, and it had been the mainmast of Meraxes—formerly Joso’s Prank—that had broken the eastern gate. Joso’s Cock, they called it. The fighting had raged bitter and bloody for most of a day and well into the night before the wood began to splinter and Meraxes’ iron figurehead, a laughing jester’s face, came crashing through. (aSoS, Daenerys VI)
Notice however, Dany does not do this before reaching Meereen. While she still keeps her sail-wings after Astapor, despite enlarging her army tremendously with the Unsullied. The Unsullied, however, have no horses. It is with the addition of the sellswords that Dany has gained a sizable amount of horses to replace the size of the wings Balerion’s sail represents.
The loss of the sail-wings also precludes Dany’s decision to “clip her wings” by remaining within the walls of Meereen, living in a pyramid, wearing a tokar that restricts even her freedom in movement when walking.
She watched Viserion climb in widening circles until he was lost to sight beyond the muddy waters of the Skahazadhan. Only then did Dany go back inside the pyramid, where Irri and Jhiqui were waiting to brush the tangles from her hair and garb her as befit the Queen of Meereen, in a Ghiscari tokar. The garment was a clumsy thing, a long loose shapeless sheet that had to be wound around her hips and under an arm and over a shoulder, its dangling fringes carefully layered and displayed. Wound too loose, it was like to fall off; wound too tight, it would tangle, trip, and bind. Even wound properly, the tokar required its wearer to hold it in place with the left hand. Walking in a tokar demanded small, mincing steps and exquisite balance, lest one tread upon those heavy trailing fringes. (aDwD, Daenerys I)
The loss of freedom is palbable from the start in aDwD, contrasted with her longingly watching her dragons fly off. It is a parallel to Dany once longing to play beyond the walls in rags in her first chapter of aGoT, except this time Dany chose to do this for all the right reasons.
It is not enough. Next, she locks Viserion and Rhaegal into a pyramid if she wants to prevent innocent people ending up as their meal.
At her command, one produced an iron key. The door opened, hinges shrieking. Daenerys Targaryen stepped into the hot heart of darkness and stopped at the lip of a deep pit. Forty feet below, her dragons raised their heads. Four eyes burned through the shadows—two of molten gold and two of bronze.[…] Viserion’s claws scrabbled against the stones, and the huge chains rattled as he tried to make his way to her again. When he could not, he gave a roar, twisted his head back as far as he was able, and spat golden flame at the wall behind him. […] He had been the first chained up. Daenerys had led him to the pit herself and shut him up inside with several oxen. Once he had gorged himself he grew drowsy. They had chained him whilst he slept. Rhaegal had been harder. Perhaps he could hear his brother raging in the pit, despite the walls of brick and stone between them. In the end, they had to cover him with a net of heavy iron chain as he basked on her terrace, and he fought so fiercely that it had taken three days to carry him down the servants’ steps, twisting and snapping. Six men had been burned in the struggle. (aDwD, Daenerys II)
Ultimately this is the reason why the Second Sons go over to the Yunkai.
She rides her silver once to parade through the camp of the refugees from Astapor. Likewise most of the horse of her armies are kept within the city.
“Even so,” the old knight said, “I would feel better if Your Grace would return to the city.” The many-colored brick walls of Meereen were half a mile back. “The bloody flux has been the bane of every army since the Dawn Age. Let us distribute the food, Your Grace.”
“On the morrow. I am here now. I want to see.” She put her heels into her silver. The others trotted after her. Jhogo rode before her, Aggo and Rakharo just behind, long Dothraki whips in hand to keep away the sick and dying. Ser Barristan was at her right, mounted on a dapple grey. To her left was Symon Stripeback of the Free Brothers and Marselen of the Mother’s Men. Three score soldiers followed close behind the captains, to protect the food wagons. Mounted men all, Dothraki and Brazen Beasts and freedmen, they were united only by their distaste for this duty. (aDwD, Daenerys VI)
At Meereen, Dany is still a dragon with wings, but shrinking and losing her freedom and enjoyment in flying. As proud as a reader can be for Dany to try this, for all the right reasons, it is likewise deeply frustrating to read her so stifled with only a meagre compromize and a poisoning attempt as a result. And yet, this can be called a successful peace, until Drogon visits Daznak’s Pit.
Above them all the dragon turned, dark against the sun. His scales were black, his eyes and horns and spinal plates blood red. Ever the largest of her three, in the wild Drogon had grown larger still. His wings stretched twenty feet from tip to tip, black as jet. He flapped them once as he swept back above the sands, and the sound was like a clap of thunder. The boar raised his head, snorting … and flame engulfed him, black fire shot with red. Dany felt the wash of heat thirty feet away. The beast’s dying scream sounded almost human. Drogon landed on the carcass and sank his claws into the smoking flesh. As he began to feed, he made no distinction between Barsena and the boar.
“Oh, gods,” moaned Reznak, “he’s eating her!” The seneschal covered his mouth. Strong Belwas was retching noisily. A queer look passed across Hizdahr zo Loraq’s long, pale face—part fear, part lust, part rapture. He licked his lips. Dany could see the Pahls streaming up the steps, clutching their tokars and tripping over the fringes in their haste to be away. Others followed. Some ran, shoving at one another. More stayed in their seats.
One man took it on himself to be a hero. He was one of the spearmen sent out to drive the boar back to his pen. Perhaps he was drunk, or mad. Perhaps he had loved Barsena Blackhair from afar or had heard some whisper of the girl Hazzea. Perhaps he was just some common man who wanted bards to sing of him. He darted forward, his boar spear in his hands. Red sand kicked up beneath his heels, and shouts rang out from the seats. Drogon raised his head, blood dripping from his teeth. The hero leapt onto his back and drove the iron spearpoint down at the base of the dragon’s long scaled neck. Dany and Drogon screamed as one.
The hero leaned into his spear, using his weight to twist the point in deeper. Drogon arched upward with a hiss of pain. His tail lashed sideways. She watched his head crane around at the end of that long serpentine neck, saw his black wings unfold. The dragonslayer lost his footing and went tumbling to the sand. He was trying to struggle back to his feet when the dragon’s teeth closed hard around his forearm. “No” was all the man had time to shout. Drogon wrenched his arm from his shoulder and tossed it aside as a dog might toss a rodent in a rat pit.
“Kill it,” Hizdahr zo Loraq shouted to the other spearmen. “Kill the beast!” (aDwD, Daenerys IX)
It is only logical that her people wish to have Drogon killed. He hunted their sheep, a little girl, is attracted by the blood at Daznak’s pit and both humans and animal are meat to him. He has grown too big and is as close to a wild dragon as can be. Would Drogon ever tolerate being put away safely in a dragonpit, whenever Dany cannot fly him? Ultimately, this scene puts a choice forward – Dany can be the human queen of Meereen or a queen-dragon (adult she-dragons are sometimes referred to as queens, such as Princess Rhaenys’s dragon Meleys, the Red Queen). Dany cannot be the first without killing the later.
And this should be recognized: Dany will have to do clip her wings and therefore freedom if she wishes to rule Westeros. Like the Targaryens before her, she will have to lock up the dragons again. Drogon would be attracted to a melee at a tourney as much as he would to Daznak’s Pit with freedmen fighting one another or animals.
Even if villains like the Boltons and Freys are cleared off the gaming board, Cersei disarmed and removed to Casterly Rock before Dany’s arrival, she will have to rebuild Westeros with
- children of families she perceives as her family’s enemies
- former allies who have moved on and chose to side with Aegon VI
- Lords and Ladies who do care about their smallfolk but are apprehensive of a dragonriding conquerer in alliance with Dothraki hordes and a giant fleet of Ironborn, after Euron’s pillaging of the Reach
- the other two dragons in order to have a family to back her.
If it was tedious and difficult to dispense justice for all in one city, then it is even more so for an entire continent. The Houses ensure regional justice and therefore she cannot easily rid herself of them, nor their power. Even on the back of a dragon it is too large a continent, especially if you are the sole dragonrider, to fly hither and thither to play judge wherever needed. And if a peasant has to journey from say the North to King’s Landing to lay their grievances at her dainty feet this threatens the expediency of justice. Nor can she replace these Houses with any of her allies (Ironborn and Dothraki) who will be culturally rejected by both nobles and smallfolk alike, and for good and understandable reasons.
I am NOT saying that Dany is incapable of clipping her own dragon wings. She proved in Meereen that she can, despite rebellion and an assassination attempt. Rebellion and assassination attempts is to be expected, for both selfish as well as righteous reasons, regardless of who rules. A bad crop, a religious fanatic becoming popular, an epidemic… Even with good leaders making the best of it, these are events promoting rebellious feelings and resentment. What I AM saying is that it will not be a process that will be less frustrating and painful to Dany the Dragon, just because it is Westeros. More, it would be tedious and frustrating for anyone. The difference between say Dany or Aegon VI would be that the latter may not have this innate need to roam the wilderness, in rags, away from walls, free to hunt whatever game is about as much as Dany does. In Daznak’s Pit we see what it ultimately would cost her to maintain peace and protect her city – not just the life of Drogon, but her own dragon spirit, if not ultimately her life. Who would wish that on her? Nor can anyone who cares about Westeros wish it to turn into a continental sized Astapor, just so she sits the Iron Throne?
In Daznak’s Pit, Dany chooses to save Drogon and earns herself true beastly dragon wings.
Then all of that had faded, the sounds dwindling, the people shrinking, the spears and arrows falling back beneath them as Drogon clawed his way into the sky. Up and up and up he’d borne her, high above the pyramids and pits, his wings outstretched to catch the warm air rising from the city’s sun baked bricks. If I fall and die, it will still have been worth it, she had thought. North they flew, beyond the river, Drogon gliding on torn and tattered wings through clouds that whipped by like the banners of some ghostly army. Dany glimpsed the shores of Slaver’s Bay and the old Valyrian road that ran beside it through sand and desolation until it vanished in the west. The road home. Then there was nothing beneath them but grass rippling in the wind. (aDwD, Daenerys X)
But Dany’s growth of wings will not stop with Drogon’s wings. After all, if the sail of Balerion the ship represents Dany’s wings at the start of aSoS, what does a fleet of Kraken sails flying dragon banners on Dany’s side represent?
Victarion sets sails from the Shields with ninety-three sails.At the Stepstones, he catches a fat merchant cog, and three more cogs, a galleas and galley, bringing the number to ninety-nine ships, but only ninety-eight sails (I’m discounting the galley). But the storms after the Stepstones wreck part of the fleet to forty-five. He did take nine more prizes, making it a total of fifty-four. These ships are cogs, fishing boats and slavers (presumably galleys). None of them are warships. So, Victarion’s fleet shrinking reflects Dany’s clipping of her wings while she stays in Meereen, and instead of continuing to conquer decides to plant trees. Victarion sails from the Island of Cedars with fifty-three ships, leaving one behind to inform lagging ships where he sailed off to. Along the way, he captures more ships, totalling sixty-one. Since at least one of them is a galley, we have to round it to a maximum of sixty sails. But we can expect the numbers of sails to increase from the Winds of Winter onwards.
Victarion Greyjoy turned back toward the prow, his gaze sweeping across his fleet. Longships filled the sea, sails furled and oars shipped, floating at anchor or run up on the pale sand shore. (aDwD, The Iron Suitor)
Of note specifically is the cog the Noble Lady.
The Noble Lady was a tub of a ship, as fat and wallowing as the noble ladies of the green lands.Her holds were huge, and Victarion packed them with armed men. With her would sail the other, lesser prizes that the Iron Fleet had taken on its long voyage to Slaver’s Bay, a lubberly assortment of cogs, great cogs,carracks, and trading galleys salted here and there with fishing boats. (tWoW excerpt, Victarion I)
It may not bemore opposite a physical description to Dany’s human form, but a dragon is not dainty except as hatchling.
Likewise, as Victarion is about to join Dany’s forces at Meereen with his fleet, so do the Windblown (2000 mounted horses) of the Tattered Prince after Barristan Selmy agrees to the deal to acquire Pentos for them.
The name alone of the company ties them to dragons and wings, or if you will sailing ships, which I pointed out represent dragons at sea. Remember that Dany complimented Drogo after he gifted her the silver filly, by saying he had given her “the wind”. And then there is the name of the Tattered Prince. Rags and tatters remind us of Dany’s dragon wish to play barefoot in rags outside the walls of Pentos – to be wild – as well as her appearance by the end of aDwD.
Even the commander of the Windblown kept his true name to himself. […] The Windblown went back thirty years, and had known but one commander, the soft-spoken, sad-eyed Pentoshi nobleman called the Tattered Prince. His hair and mail were silver-grey, but his ragged cloak was made of twists of cloth of many colors, blue and grey and purple, red and gold and green, magenta and vermilion and cerulean, all faded by the sun. When the Tattered Prince was three-and-twenty, as Dick Straw told the story, the magisters of Pentos had chosen him to be their new prince, hours after beheading their old prince. Instead he’d buckled on a sword, mounted his favorite horse, and fled to the Disputed Lands, never to return. (aDwD, The Windblown)
Dany’s clothes were hardly more than rags, and offered little in the way of warmth. One of her sandals had slipped off during her wild flight from Meereen and she had left the other up by Drogon’s cave, preferring to go barefoot rather than half-shod. Her tokar and veils she had abandoned in the pit, and her linen undertunic had never been made to withstand the hot days and cold nights of the Dothraki sea. Sweat and grass and dirt had stained it, and Dany had torn a strip off the hem to make a bandage for her shin. I must look a ragged thing, and starved, she thought, but if the days stay warm, I will not freeze. (aDwD, Daenerys X)
The Tattered Prince was a man who left Pentos after being selected their ceremonial prince, with the potential to be sacrificed. And of course, in High Valyrian we could translate the title Tattered Prince into the Tattered Dragon.
There have been numerous proposals regarding the identity of the Tattered Prince through the years, since aDwD was published, many of them involving parallels to Targaryens. Some readers propose he has some Targaryen ancestry, like Brown Ben Plumm does, others identify him as a tangential unnaccounted non-Targaryen historical character based on Targaryen historical ties and stories. At the very least these proposals over the years show that readers pick up on dragon-related ties to this figure. And I do think that is because George wrote him to be compared to a dragon on a meta-level at least.
In the yellow candlelight his silver-grey hair seemed almost golden, though the pouches underneath his eyes were etched as large as saddlebags. […] “My ragged raiment?” The Pentoshi gave a shrug. “A poor thing … yet those tatters fill my foes with fear, and on the battlefield the sight of my rags blowing in the wind emboldens my men more than any banner. […] Tattered and twisty, what a rogue I am.” (aDwD, The Spurned Suitor)
His tattered cloak has a similar impact as a dragon’s wings. In fact, Drogon’s wings were tattered and torn in part at Daznak’s Pit.
North they flew, beyond the river, Drogon gliding on torn and tattered wings through clouds that whipped by like the banners of some ghostly army. (aDwD, Daenerys X)
Initially the Windblown fight alongside the side of the Yunkai, at least at Astapor, but the Tattered Prince sends Quentyn and his friends into Meereen to offer Dany a deal, so the Tattered Prince and Windblown can join her side.
“Your Grace. We set the woman Meris free, as you commanded. Before she went, she asked to speak with you. I met with her instead. She claims this Tattered Prince meant to bring the Windblown over to your cause from the beginning. That he sent her here to treat with you secretly, but the Dornishmen unmasked them and betrayed them before she could make her own approach.” […] “The Tattered Prince will want more than coin, Your Grace. Meris says that he wants Pentos.” […] “He would be willing to wait, the woman Meris suggested. Until we march for Westeros.” (aDwD, Daenerys IX)
At the time, Dany rejects the offer, since she regards Illyrio as an ally and benefactor. Later, when Dany is still lost to Meereen at the Dothraki Sea, Selmy agrees to the deal with the Tattered Prince in return for the Windblown rescuing the hostages such as Daario in Yunkai’s camp.
“What did Prince Quentyn promise the Tattered Prince in return for all this help?” He got no answer. Ser Gerris looked at Ser Archibald. Ser Archibald looked at his hands, the floor, the door. “Pentos,” said Ser Barristan. “He promised him Pentos. Say it. No words of yours can help or harm Prince Quentyn now.”
“Aye,” said Ser Archibald unhappily. “It was Pentos. They made marks on a paper, the two of them.”
There is a chance here. “We still have Windblown in the dungeons. Those feigned deserters.” […] “I mean to send them back to the Tattered Prince. And you with them. You will be two amongst thousands. Your presence in the Yunkish camps should pass unnoticed. I want you to deliver a message to the Tattered Prince. Tell him that I sent you, that I speak with the queen’s voice. Tell him that we’ll pay his price if he delivers us our hostages, unharmed and whole.” (aDwD, The Queen’s Hand)
In the ninth chapter of aDwD, we may imagine Dany would not be pleased whatsoever with Selmy for making such an agreement with the Tattered Prince on her behalf. The tattered and ragged Dany on Drogon’s back who realized the locusts were poisoned might consider it at least out of necessity. Once she learns from Tyrion that Illyrio had Aegon taken care of for over a decade (with guard, halfmaester and fallen septa) and got the Golden Company for him, Dany is unlikely to still have issues with gifting Pentos to the Tattered Prince. Illyrio had her married off to a horselord for an uncertain army like the Dothraki for her now dead brother. They never had any guards before being taken in, no maester, no septa. The discrepancies would make Dany – already more suspicous against betrayal and treason – not think kindly of Illyrio anymore, even perhaps eager to destroy Pentos. So, in that sense the Tattered Prince ensures the rest of Dany’s dragon body will already prepare to take Pentos mentally, while she is absent.
Through Quentyn’s failed plan, the Tattered Prince is also responsible for freeing Viserion and Rhaegal from their captivity.
This is not the sole sellsword company allied to Dany. There are the Second Sons too. Initially they are led by the Braavosi Mero, nicknamed the Titan’s Bastard. The Second Sons are hired by Yunkai to defend the city against Dany’s army in aSoS. She invites him for parlay, but he goes no further than to agree to mull Dany’s proposal over a casket of wine. That night, Dany has her men attack the companies and Mero “flees”. Brown Ben Plumm is chosen to lead the Second Sons after this. And of him we know he has at least one drop of Targaryen dragon blood, if not two.
But as Brown Ben was leaving, Viserion spread his pale white wings and flapped lazily at his head. One of the wings buffeted the sellsword in his face. The white dragon landed awkwardly with one foot on the man’s head and one on his shoulder, shrieked, and flew off again. “He likes you, Ben,” said Dany.
“And well he might.” Brown Ben laughed. “I have me a drop of the dragon blood myself, you know.” […] “Well,” said Brown Ben, “there was some old Plumm in the Sunset Kingdoms who wed a dragon princess. My grandmama told me the tale. He lived in King Aegon’s day.” (aSoS, Daenerys V)
And we learn of this as Viserion pointedly and repeatedly flaps his wings into Brown Benn’s face. It is as if Viserion is indicating here – this guy here represents dragon’s wings. And now we can even sympathize with Brown Benn for deciding to leave Dany’s side at Meereen after she locked her dragons in chains in one of the pyramids. It would have been to him as if he had been chained and wingclipped himself. Ben effectively remains neutral when Selmy performs his sortie in the excerpts of tWoW, playing cyvasse with Tyrion instead and ignoring the Yunkai orders. But once Viserion and Rhaegal are flying free, and the Tattered “Dragon” has turned his cloak to Dany’s side, so does Brown Ben.
And then finally we have the Stormcrows, led by Daario Naharys, of 500 horse. With the Stormcrows we already have a wing anology, not to mention the storm-tie to Daenerys Stormborn. Birds may not be dragons, but twice we have a bird analogy to a dragon. The latest is the most obvious one:
Thrice that day she caught sight of Drogon. Once he was so far off that he might have been an eagle, slipping in and out of distant clouds, but Dany knew the look of him by now, even when he was no more than a speck. (aDwD, Daenerys X)
The first time is in Dany’s third chapter of aGoT. When she decides to explore the Dothraki Sea by herself, ordering Jorah to command those riding with her to remain behind, she notices a falcon circling above her.
The sky was a deep blue, and high above them a hunting hawk circled. The grass sea swayed and sighed with each breath of wind, the air was warm on her face, and Dany felt at peace. She would not let Viserys spoil it. (aGoT, Daenerys III)
In the bear-stuff (see the bear and maiden fair essays), George uses birds as spirit companions of bear characters. He may not have restricted to bears alone, but to dragon characters as well. With black bears of the Night’s Watch the ravens are vegetarians, since black bears are vegetarian. The nature of a dragon is that of a hunter, a predator, and thus we get birds that hunt here. This is exemplified in the ending of Dany’s last chapter of aDwD, after she abandons any mental concept of being a queen of Meereen and commits to hunting horsemeat (and perhaps scout).
Dany leapt onto [Drogon’s] back. She stank of blood and sweat and fear, but none of that mattered. “To go forward I must go back,” she said. Her bare legs tightened around the dragon’s neck. She kicked him, and Drogon threw himself into the sky. Her whip was gone, so she used her hands and feet and turned him north by east, the way the scout had gone. Drogon went willingly enough; perhaps he smelled the rider’s fear. (aDwD, Daenerys X)
She ends up eating charred horsemeat alongside Drogon like an animal, on the same spot where it died, surrounded by burning grass.
The carcass was too heavy for [Drogon] to bear back to his lair, so Drogon consumed his kill there, tearing at the charred flesh as the grasses burned around them, the air thick with drifting smoke and the smell of burnt horsehair. Dany, starved, slid off his back and ate with him, ripping chunks of smoking meat from the dead horse with bare, burned hands. (aDwD, Daenerys X)
And so yes, the Stormcrows certainly may represent wings of Dany the Dragon, as well as her spirit. While I take Old Nan’s words about crows being liars and how it is used amongst the fandom with a grain of salt for a man who forgot the many names he once had, the choice of the name Stormcrows by George is no accident here. No, I do not mean to say that Dany has the spirit of a liar, though she does use deception and lies as a war tactic at Astapor and Yunkai. What I mean is that it implies that the leader of the Stormcrows is not who he claims to be – just a Tyroshi. If Ben Plumm is a dragon, and the Tattered Prince at the very least symbolically a Tattered Dragon, then so must be Daario Naharis. Who or which line is still up for speculation. Personally, I believe Daario to be the Blackfyre descendant in the novels, over Aegon (see House Blackfyre and Lady Blizzardborn’s case on it.). And thus Daario’s “nature” or “spirit” is Dany’s dragon-nature too, which is a sellsword nature over that of a Serwyn-nature. Hence a part of her wingspan is made up from three sellsword companies at the beginning of tWoW.
If in thought we add the Dothraki brought to heel to Dany and Drogon, and see all of her army spread across the land, the fleet sail across the sees, all the way to Pentos, we can see how Dany becomes the Dragon that Mounts the World. After all, a stallion or mare are but the wings of a dragon.
The Whipping Tail
A dragon is not solely wings. Especially with hatchlings their tail is noticeable as well. Flying away or whipping a threat with their tail is all they can do in the beginning. Their teeth and claws are but tiny needles, and they have no firepower yet. And so it is too with Dany after she hatched at her wedding to Khal Drogo. She has wings with her silver and a tail in Jhogo’s whip. Let that just be the sole weapon used against Viserys during Dany’s confrontation with him at the Dothraki Sea.
Crack. The whip made a sound like thunder. The coil took Viserys around the throat and yanked him backward. He went sprawling in the grass, stunned and choking. […] Her brother was on his knees, his fingers digging under the leather coils, crying incoherently, struggling for breath. The whip was tight around his windpipe. […] Jhogo gave a pull on the whip, yanking Viserys around like a puppet on a string. He went sprawling again, freed from the leather embrace, a thin line of blood under his chin where the whip had cut deep. (aGoT, Daenerys III)
Notice the mention of leather coils, and how the scene becomes the image of a dragon tail catching prey or attacker, or simply used to hold on.
The cream-colored dragon sunk sharp black claws into the lion’s mane and coiled its tail around her arm, while Ser Jorah took his accustomed place by her side. (aCoK, Daenerys I)
In Part I – The Slaying Saint George’s Dragon, I argued Jhogo’s whip was an extension of a girdle in Dany’s third chapter of aGoT. In the other two confrontations between Dany and Viserys in the consecutive chapters, we have only belts and no whip anymore. The reason George used belts in the other scenes was to explicitly have pinpointers to the re-enactment of the Saint George legend. In the scene in the Dothraki Sea, however, the whip serves two purposes:
- as an extension of a girdle,
- but also to reflect Dany’s physical dragon features. In that scene Dany compares visibly best to a young dragon of tail, wings and bones in the wilderness.
In Part I, I also argued that since Jhogo is one of her khas, and later on her ko (blood of my blood), Jhogo’s whip is actually Dany’s whip or girdle.
She turned to the three young warriors of her khas. “Jhogo, to you I give the silver-handled whip that was my bride gift, and name you ko, and ask your oath, that you will live and die as blood of my blood, riding at my side to keep me safe from harm.” (aGoT, Daenerys X)
However as an extension, we must see not just the whip, but Jhogo as a functioning part of Dany’s dragon body. Jhogo himself functions as Dany’s tail here, like the sellsword commanders and their companies on horseback represent her wingspan.
The next scene that involves Dany’s tail is the capture of the wine seller after he betrays himself to be false.
The wineseller shrugged, reached for the cup … and grabbed the cask instead, flinging it at her with both hands. Ser Jorah bulled into her, knocking her out of the way. The cask bounced off his shoulder and smashed open on the ground. Dany stumbled and lost her feet. “No,” she screamed, thrusting her hands out to break her fall … and Doreah caught her by the arm and wrenched her backward, so she landed on her legs and not her belly. The trader vaulted over the stall, darting between Aggo and Rakharo. Quaro reached for an arakh that was not there as the blond man slammed him aside. He raced down the aisle. Dany heard the snap of Jhogo’s whip, saw the leather lick out and coil around the wineseller’s leg. The man sprawled face first in the dirt. (aGoT, Daenerys VI)
Notice that while several men try to capture the wine seller, the sole one who is successful is Jhogo with his whip. Why the others fail in capturing him, we will explore in later sections, but basically this is because they all represent a dragon body part that hatchling Dany has not yet under control or is underdeveloped. All she has at this point are her wings and tail.
When Jhogo whipped the tail during the confrontation with Viserys at the Dothraki Sea, this was an instinctive reaction of which Dany had little control over, except to let him go in the end, not unlike Dany’s later dragon hatchlings lash their tails in anger.
Across the tent, Rhaegal unfolded green wings to flap and flutter a half foot before thumping to the carpet. When he landed, his tail lashed back and forth in fury, and he raised his head and screamed. (aCoK, Daenerys I)
But by the time, Jorah hints that the wine seller may have the intention to poison Dany, she has more control over her tail.
Jhogo reached for the whip coiled at his belt, but Dany stopped him with a light touch on the arm. (aGoT, Daenerys VI)
The end of the chapter dispells any notion that Jhogo and the whip are a seperate entity from Dany: the captive is chained to Dany’s silver (her wings).
Khal Drogo led [the khalasar] on his great red stallion, with Daenerys beside him on her silver. The wineseller hurried behind them, naked, on foot, chained at throat and wrists. His chains were fastened to the halter of Dany’s silver. As she rode, he ran after her, barefoot and stumbling. No harm would come to him … so long as he kept up. (aGoT, Daenerys VI)
As a princess, Dany rides the would-be assassin out of the city to his death by a secure girdle. As a dragon, she flies off with the wineseller forced to hang on to her tail.
As we have had before, in this chapter too, we see references to the Saint George legend as well as Dany acting like a true dragon, albeit a hatchling. This seems odd, since Viserys is dead already. But when we focus on the description of the wineseller, we discover hints to regard him as a ghost of Voserys.
He was a small man, slender and handsome, his flaxen hair curled and perfumed after the fashion of Lys. (aGoT, Daenerys VI)
The combination of being handsome, flaxen hair and smells of Lys implies he is meant to be seen as a shadow of Viserys. While Volantis claims to have preserved Valyrian nobility after the Doom, it is in Lys that the Valyrian features are the most prevalent.
The Lyseni themselves are beautiful as well, for here more than anywhere else in the known world the old Valyrian bloodlines still run strong. […] The Lyseni are also great breeders of slaves, mating beauty with beauty in hopes of producing ever more refined and lovely courtesans and bedslaves. The blood of Valyria still runs strong in Lys, where even the smallfolk oft boast pale skin, silver-gold hair, and the purple, lilac, and pale blue eyes of the dragonlords of old. (tWoIaF – The Free Cities: The Quarrelsome Daughters: Myr, Lys and Tyrosh)
In other words, Lys is full of common men and women who may look like dragonlords of old, but none of them are “dragons”. And so, when Dany decides that Viserys is not a dragon at the end of her fifth chapter in aGoT, she determines he is no more different than a Lyseni: Valyrian looks, but no dragonrider blood. Notice how the world book mentions lilac eyes amongst the Lyseni. In the novels only two Valyrian looking men have lilac eyes: Viserys and the Lyseni spymaster of the Golden Company Lysono Maar.
The spymaster was new to Griff, a Lyseni named Lysono Maar, with lilac eyes and white-gold hair and lips that would have been the envy of a whore. (aDwD, The Lost Lord (Jon Connington I))
[…] Arianne’s company was met by a column of sellswords down from Griffin’s Roost, led by the most exotic creature that the princess had ever laid her eyes on, with painted fingernails and gemstones sparkling in his ears. Lysono Maar spoke the Common Tongue very well. “I have the honor to be the eyes and ears of the Golden Company, princess.”
“You look…” She hesitated.[…] “…like a Targaryen,” Arianne insisted. His eyes were a pale lilac, his hair a waterfall of white and gold. All the same, something about him made her skin crawl. Was this what Viserys looked like? she found herself wondering. If so perhaps it is a good thing he is dead. (tWoW excerpt, Arianne II)
Lysono Maar may look like a Targaryen, like Viserys, but he is no dragon. He is just a man, as was Viserys.
George did not give us the color of eyes of the wine merchant. It does not matter. The Lyseni perfume links the merchant in a similar manner to Viserys as George does with Lysono Maar with the lilac eyes, just less explicitly as GRRM does in Arianne’s excerpt of tWoW.
“Tell me,” she commanded as she lowered herself onto her cushions. “Was it the Usurper?”
“Yes.” The knight drew out a folded parchment. “A letter to Viserys, from Magister Illyrio. Robert Baratheon offers lands and lordships for your death, or your brother’s.”
“My brother?” Her sob was half a laugh. “He does not know yet, does he? The Usurper owes Drogo a lordship.” This time her laugh was half a sob. (aGoT, Daenerys VI)
Important here is that as I showed in Part 1 of Dany’s essays related to Serwyn and Saint George is that now we have four chapters that allude to the Saint George legend, in which Dany is the actual dragon, each time trumping Viserys or a reminder/ghost/shadow of him. Only in two of those chaptures, the whip is specifically featured, rather than the belt. And now that we know the whip is not just a stand-in girdle, but a dragon’s tail, we have to look what else these particular whip-chapters have in common. The answer is that in both chapters Dany manages to convert someone’s mind to do what she wishes.
- In the Dothraki Sea, the capture of Viserys with Dany’s tail converts Jorah enough to obey Dany’s command over that of Viserys, despite the fact he swore his sword to Viserys. And while Jorah may not swear his sword to Dany until the end of aGoT, and he continues to spy on Dany until Qarth, he does as she commands when it comes to Viserys afterwards.
- In the sixth chapter, Dany converts Jorah to get Drogo to agree into taking the Iron Throne, even though Viserys is dead.
Many readers remember the chapter structure as Dany fails at convincing Drogo to take the Iron Throne for their unborn son, but Drogo changes his mind after the assassination attempt. At best, some remember that Jorah said something that helped Drogo in changing his mind. Most readers forget though that Dany attempts to recruit Jorah for this goal.
Let us go through the chapter’s structure. It starts with Drogo dismissing Dany’s efforts to convince him to take the Iron Throne.
The khal’s mouth twisted in a frown beneath the droop of his long mustachio. “The stallion who mounts the world has no need of iron chairs.” (aGoT, Daenerys VI)
This is how the dialogue begins for the reader, but it is evident there was a dialogue before Drogo’s rejection of the idea. Except we get to read the end of a love-making scene. So, Dany first introduced the idea to Drogo, then they made love, and Dany and Drogo continued the discussion after.
Nor was it the first time that Dany brought up the subject.
“In the Free Cities, there are ships by the thousand,” Dany told him, as she had told him before. “Wooden horses with a hundred legs, that fly across the sea on wings full of wind.” (aGoT, Daenerys VI)
Though Drogo decrees the subject closed and Dany predends to acquiesce, she has no such intention.
Khal Drogo did not want to hear it. “We will speak no more of wooden horses and iron chairs.” He dropped the cloth and began to dress. “This day I will go to the grass and hunt, woman wife,” he announced as he shrugged into a painted vest and buckled on a wide belt with heavy medallions of silver, gold, and bronze.
“Yes, my sun-and-stars,” Dany said. Drogo would take his bloodriders and ride in search of hrakkar, the great white lion of the plains. If they returned triumphant, her lord husband’s joy would be fierce, and he might be willing to hear her out. (aGoT, Daenerys VI)
She intends to bring it up again the moment he returns from his hunt and feels triumphant and joyful.
From these paragraphs we glean the following:
- Initially, she tried to convince Drogo with rational arguments;
- when that failed, she aimed to use love-making to bring Drogo into an emotional state where he would overcome his objections. (this is not uncommon in relations).
- That failed as well, but she has no intention of giving up, and hopes Drogo’s emotional state after a successful hunt will do the trick.
So, the chapter sets Dany up as using Drogo’s emotional state to get her wish granted. All she requires is the right opportunity that would make Drogo vulnerable to making a decision based on emotions rather than rationale.
Dany also comes to the realisation that she cannot convince Drogo by herself alone. And so, she attempts to recruit Jorah to help her in this.
As Doreah combed out her hair, she sent Jhiqui to find Ser Jorah Mormont. The knight came at once. He wore horsehair leggings and painted vest, like a rider. Coarse black hair covered his thick chest and muscular arms. “My princess. How may I serve you?”
“You must talk to my lord husband,” Dany said. “Drogo says the stallion who mounts the world will have all the lands of the earth to rule, and no need to cross the poison water. He talks of leading his khalasar east after Rhaego is born, to plunder the lands around the Jade Sea.”
The knight looked thoughtful. “The khal has never seen the Seven Kingdoms,” he said. “They are nothing to him. If he thinks of them at all, no doubt he thinks of islands, a few small cities clinging to rocks in the manner of Lorath or Lys, surrounded by stormy seas. The riches of the east must seem a more tempting prospect.”
“But he must ride west,” Dany said, despairing. “Please, help me make him understand.” […]
“The Dothraki do things in their own time, for their own reasons,” the knight answered. “Have patience, Princess. Do not make your brother’s mistake. We will go home, I promise you.” (aGoT, Daenerys VI)
Jorah does not acquiesce here. Not yet. At this point, he is still hoping to get news from Illyrio about Robert’s potential pardon of him. Perhaps he believes Robert Baratheon is the easiest and safest bet to get back home to Bear Island and be Lord Mormont again. And with Viserys dead, it is doubtful he feared for Dany’s life. So, during the above conversation it is in Jorah’s self-interest to not change Drogo’s mind. But after the assassination attempt, after the whip snapped (again), Jorah does exactly what she asked of him.
Drogo returns in a good mood from his successful hunt, feeling invincible, as Dany had hoped earlier that day.
Cohollo was leading a packhorse behind him, with the carcass of a great white lion slung across its back. Above, the stars were coming out. The khal laughed as he swung down off his stallion and showed her the scars on his leg where the hrakkar had raked him through his leggings. “I shall make you a cloak of its skin, moon of my life,” he swore. (aGoT, Daenerys VI)
While he feels invincible, Dany informs Drogo of the events at the market.
When Dany told him what had happened at the market, all laughter stopped, and Khal Drogo grew very quiet.
Remember, that her third chapter in aGoT already establishes as Dany having the legal power over life and death over anyone who threatens her, when Jhogo asked her whether he should kill Viserys for her (see Dany I). And that she also covered for Viserys twice about informing her husband about a threat to her life. So, Dany does not reveal the poisoning attempt to just see the poisoner punished, but to steer Drogo into an emotional state against Robert Baratheon – namely anger.
Meanwhile, Jorah’s argument is the deal breaker. He claims that more assassins will come.
“This poisoner was the first,” Ser Jorah Mormont warned him, “but he will not be the last. Men will risk much for a lordship.” (aGoT, Daenerys VI)
Jorah implies that executing the assassin will not suffice; there will be more until either Robert gets the news that Dany is dead or until Robert is dead. He knew very well that this argument would make a proud khal – who feels himself invincible, who loves his wife, who is looking forward to his son being born – decide to invade Westeros and try and take the throne of Robert Baratheon. Jorah knew this, because he’s been smitten with a woman himself and made foolish choices for her – he won a tourney for her; he got himself into debt for her; he sold poachers into slavery for her; he fled into exile for her.
Now, Drogo’s first decision – the wine seller’s fate, horse gifts for Jhogo and Jorah – would have happened whether Jorah spoke up or not.
Drogo was silent for a time. Finally he said, “This seller of poisons ran from the moon of my life. Better he should run after her. So he will. Jhogo, Jorah the Andal, to each of you I say, choose any horse you wish from my herds, and it is yours. Any horse save my red and the silver that was my bride gift to the moon of my life. I make this gift to you for what you did. (aGoT, Daenerys VI)
Drogo would not however have decided to try and invade Westeros without Jorah’s argument.
“And to Rhaego son of Drogo, the stallion who will mount the world, to him I also pledge a gift. To him I will give this iron chair his mother’s father sat in. I will give him Seven Kingdoms. I, Drogo, khal, will do this thing.” His voice rose, and he lifted his fist to the sky. “I will take my khalasar west to where the world ends, and ride the wooden horses across the black salt water as no khal has done before. I will kill the men in the iron suits and tear down their stone houses. I will rape their women, take their children as slaves, and bring their broken gods back to Vaes Dothrak to bow down beneath the Mother of Mountains. This I vow, I, Drogo son of Bharbo. This I swear before the Mother of Mountains, as the stars look down in witness.” (aGoT, Daenerys VI)
And Jorah would not have made the argument without Dany’s request earlier that day.
Since this chapter ends with Dany personally dragging the shadow of her brother (a prince) in the form of the wine seller out of the city Vaes Dothrak, girdled to her wings, we thus have a sinister turn-around of the Saint George legend. In this version, the true dragon starts to convert the citizens slowly but surely into following her wishes.
Such as her khas, as I brought up earlier. She gives them her bride gifts, declaring them to be her kos, before the hatching of her dragon eggs. Initially they refuse, insisting they will accompany her back to Vaes Dothrak as her khas. But after the hatching of the dragon eggs, they accept their new role as khas. Plotwise of course, it is the hatching event and her surviving the fire that alters their mind. But visually, the dragon eggs hatch just after the image of the whip of flame lashes out.
Now, she thought, now, and for an instant she glimpsed Khal Drogo before her, mounted on his smoky stallion, a flaming lash in his hand. He smiled, and the whip snaked down at the pyre, hissing. She heard a crack, the sound of shattering stone. (aGoT, Daenerys X)
Crack. The whip made a sound like thunder. (aGoT, Daenerys III)
And her tail is stronger here, for she announces she is a woman now, instead of a child.
“You will be my khalasar,” she told them. “I see the faces of slaves. I free you. Take off your collars. Go if you wish, no one shall harm you. If you stay, it will be as brothers and sisters, husbands and wives.” The black eyes watched her, wary, expressionless. “I see the children, women, the wrinkled faces of the aged. I was a child yesterday. Today I am a woman. Tomorrow I will be old. To each of you I say, give me your hands and your hearts, and there will always be a place for you.” (aGoT, Daenerys X)
Much later in Dany’s arc, several significant events include a whip, growing in size and sound, as she claims people for herself, such as the Harpy’s Scourge.
Dany handed the slaver the end of Drogon’s chain. In return he presented her with the whip. The handle was black dragonbone, elaborately carved and inlaid with gold. Nine long thin leather lashes trailed from it, each one tipped by a gilded claw. The gold pommel was a woman’s head, with pointed ivory teeth. “The harpy’s fingers,” Kraznys named the scourge.
Dany turned the whip in her hand. Such a light thing, to bear such weight. “Is it done, then? Do they belong to me?”
“It is done,” he agreed, giving the chain a sharp pull to bring Drogon down from the litter.
Dany mounted her silver. She could feel her heart thumping in her chest. […] She stood in her stirrups and raised the harpy’s fingers above her head for all the Unsullied to see. “IT IS DONE!” she cried at the top of her lungs. “YOU ARE MINE!” She gave the mare her heels and galloped along the first rank, holding the fingers high. “YOU ARE THE DRAGON’S NOW! YOU’RE BOUGHT AND PAID FOR! IT IS DONE! IT IS DONE!” (aSoS, Daenerys II)
A handle of dragonbone, several lashes bound together, each tipped with a claw and the pommel a woman’s head with pointy teeth. The scourge symbolizes every she-dragon attribute. A picture says so much more than thousand words, now that you know her silver are her wings and the whip her tail.
Yes, Dany tosses it aside after lashing Kraznys’s face with it and having Drogon set him aflame. And yes, Dany gives the Unsullied their freedom. But she first claimed them to be the dragon’s with her tail, and if whips are a dragon’s tail, then what are lances? Teeth? Claws? For a moment she held the Harpy’s Scourge and made the Unsullied part of her dragon-body, before she told them they were free. The teeth and claws of a dragon cannot practically choose to go their own way from the rest of its body.
And then finally, Dany uses a whip to cow Drogon at the pit.
She scrabbled in the sand, pushing against the pitmaster’s corpse, and her fingers brushed against the handle of his whip. Touching it made her feel braver. The leather was warm, alive. Drogon roared again, the sound so loud that she almost dropped the whip. His teeth snapped at her. Dany hit him. “No,” she screamed, swinging the lash with all the strength that she had in her. The dragon jerked his head back. “No,” she screamed again. “NO!” The barbs raked along his snout. Drogon rose, his wings covering her in shadow. Dany swung the lash at his scaled belly, back and forth until her arm began to ache. His long serpentine neck bent like an archer’s bow. With a hisssssss, he spat black fire down at her. Dany darted underneath the flames, swinging the whip and shouting, “No, no, no. Get DOWN!” His answering roar was full of fear and fury, full of pain. His wings beat once, twice … and folded. The dragon gave one last hiss and stretched out flat upon his belly. (aDwD, Daenerys IX)
Like the wings, the whips also grow and mature in size. First we had Jhogo’s single whip, then we have the Harpy’s Scourge. Finally, the whip at the pit has barbs on it, just like an adult dragon’s tail has spikes on it. By cowing Drogon with her own barbed tail, Dany makes him hers.
Teeth, claws and firepower
If the whip is Dany’s tail and her silver her hatchling wings, then what are her teeth, claws and firepower? Well, George has swords named as teeth and claws.
[Joffrey] drew his sword and showed it to her; a longsword adroitly shrunken to suit a boy of twelve, gleaming blue steel, castle-forged and double-edged, with a leather grip and a lion’s-head pommel in gold. Sansa exclaimed over it admiringly, and Joffrey looked pleased. “I call it Lion’s Tooth,” he said. (aGoT, Sansa I)
“Longclaw is an apt name.” Jon tried a practice cut. He was clumsy and uncomfortable with his left hand, yet even so the steel seemed to flow through the air, as if it had a will of its own. “Wolves have claws, as much as bears.” (aGoT, Jon VIII)
And so do dragons, Jon!
We thus can deduce that arakhs represent the teeth, as their shape can be likened most to teeth.
The teeth [of the dragon skulls] were long, curving knives of black diamond. (aGoT, Tyrion II)
[Dany] heard a shout, saw a shove, and in the blink of an eye the arakhs were out, long razor-sharp blades, half sword and half scythe. (aGoT, Daenerys II)
Meanwhile Jorah’s prior Valyrian sword was Longclaw. He might not fight with that particular sword anymore, but we can still regard his swordfighting as an extension of a claw – a dragonclaw.
Finally, a dragon has firepower at some point. While by the end of aCoK actual dragonfire is used in protection of Dany in the House of the Undying, she also had dragonfire in another form – namely, arrows from bows.
However, in their early hatchling stages, dragons mostly have to rely on their wings and tail to protect themselves from coming to harm. Initially, their teeth and claws are nothing but tiny black needles.
Initially, solely steam will rise from their nostrils. Others have to char the meat for Dany’s hatchlings.
Such little things, she thought as she fed them by hand. Or rather, tried to feed them, for the dragons would not eat. They would hiss and spit at each bloody morsel of horsemeat, steam rising from their nostrils, yet they would not take the food . . . until Dany recalled something Viserys had told her when they were children. Only dragons and men eat cooked meat, he had said. When she had her handmaids char the horsemeat black, the dragons ripped at it eagerly, their heads striking like snakes. So long as the meat was seared, they gulped down several times their own weight every day, and at last began to grow larger and tronger. (aCoK, Daenerys I)
With this we get the reference of Dany taking steam baths.
They filled her bath with hot water brought up from the kitchen and scented it with fragrant oils. The girl pulled the rough cotton tunic over Dany’s head and helped her into the tub. The water was scalding hot, but Daenerys did not flinch or cry out. She liked the heat. It made her feel clean. Besides, her brother had often told her that it was never too hot for a Targaryen. “Ours is the house of the dragon,” he would say. “The fire is in our blood.” (aGoT, Daenerys I)
She commanded her handmaids to prepare her a bath. Doreah built a fire outside the tent, while Irri and Jhiqui fetched the big copper tub—another bride gift—from the packhorses and carried water from the pool. When the bath was steaming, Irri helped her into it and climbed in after her. (aGoT, Daenerys III)
“Jhiqui, a bath, please,” she commanded, to wash the dust of travel from her skin and soak her weary bones. It was pleasant to know that they would linger here for a while, that she would not need to climb back on her silver on the morrow. The water was scalding hot, as she liked it. (aGoT, Daenerys IV)
In the first chapter then, Dany is the egg heating up, while in the third and fourth chapter we have the picture of Dany steaming, but not yet producing flame. In the sixth chapter and after she orders fires being built – but does not do so herself, not until the pyre – when she sets it aflame after taking a hot steaming bath.
Her bath was scalding hot when Irri helped her into the tub, but Dany did not flinch or cry aloud. She liked the heat. It made her feel clean. Jhiqui had scented the water with the oils she had found in the market in Vaes Dothrak; the steam rose moist and fragrant. […] Dany took the torch from Aggo’s hand and thrust it between the logs. The oil took the fire at once, the brush and dried grass a heartbeat later. Tiny flames went darting up the wood like swift red mice, skating over the oil and leaping from bark to branch to leaf. A rising heat puffed at her face, soft and sudden as a lover’s breath, but in seconds it had grown too hot to bear. (aGoT, Daenerys X)
It takes almost a whole novel (aCoK), before Dany’s hatchlings can produce flame of their own and use their claws and teeths to rip at a living enemy.
Drogon’s long neck snaked out and he opened his mouth to scream, steam rising from between his teeth. […] Then indigo turned to orange, and whispers turned to screams. […] Perched above her, the dragon spread his wings and tore at the terrible dark heart, ripping the rotten flesh to ribbons, and when his head snapped forward, fire flew from his open jaws, bright and hot. She could hear the shrieks of the Undying as they burned, their high thin papery voices crying out in tongues long dead. Their flesh was crumbling parchment, their bones dry wood soaked in tallow. They danced as the flames consumed them; they staggered and writhed and spun and raised blazing hands on high, their fingers bright as torches. (aCoK, Daenerys IV)
Hence, if my proposal to regard Dany’s human guards and their weapons as a part of her dragon’s body is correct, we should not see those guards being able to use the arakhs, swords and bows successfully towards the end of aGoT, almost a complete novel after she was hatched at her wedding.
Remember the scene where Jhogo captures the wine seller? All but Jhogo of her khas failed at stopping him.
The trader vaulted over the stall, darting between Aggo and Rakharo. Quaro reached for an arakh that was not there as the blond man slammed him aside. He raced down the aisle. Dany heard the snap of Jhogo’s whip, saw the leather lick out and coil around the wineseller’s leg. The man sprawled face first in the dirt. (aGoT, Daenerys VI)
Neither Aggo or Rhakaro have time to respond. Solely Quaro makes the attempt, but finds his arakh missing. Aggo’s weapon is the bow, Rakharo’s and Quaro’s are the arakhs. In-world, they cannot carry their weapons, because in Vaes Dothrak it is forbidden to draw blood. But in the meta-layer, the absence of their weapons works since a hatchling’s teeth and claws are nothing but tiny black needles.
But when we turn towards the fighting scenes during Mirri Maz Dur working her ritual to save Drogo from death, Dany has grown as dragon, and therefore is able to use her “teeth”, “claws” and “firepower” in unison to defend herself from physical harm.
Drogo’s kos arrive at the scene and want to stop the ritual. A fight breaks out between Drogo’s kos and Dany’s khas plus Jorah. Now, if we regard Dany’s khas and Jorah as her teeth, claws and firepower, then we can regard Drogo’s blood-of-his-blood as his teeth and claws. I do not claim here that we ought to regard Drogon as a dragon too, but we certainly can view him (and his people) as a fiery predator. And while Dany is nearly a drake (half-grown dragon), Drogo is a grown predator. Dothraki have a predatory culture after all, even hunting other predators (such as the white lion or attacking and enslaving other khalasars). Meanwhile many readers have grown more convinced that Danny or Drogon will end up being “the stallion that mounts the world”, which is a Dothraki prophecy, and long time viewed by them as a prophecy of their own. George might describe the Dothraki as dragonlike if we were to ask him, in the same vein that Jon Snow considers giants to be bearlike.
This take also implies we should regard the fighting between Dany’s khas and and Drogo’s kos not just as a battle between Dany and her husband’s close-minded bodyguards, but as a battle of wills between Dany and Drogo themselves.
“This must not be,” Qotho thundered. She had not seen the bloodrider return. Haggo and Cohollo were with him. (aGoT, Daenerys VIII)
It would mean that while at death’s door, Drogo is an unwilling patient to Mirri treating him.
Now let us inspect the fighting scene itself.
“You will die, maegi,” Qotho promised, “but the other must die first.” He drew his arakh and made for the tent. “No,” she shouted, “you mustn’t.” She caught him by the shoulder, but Qotho shoved her aside. Dany fell to her knees, crossing her arms over her belly to protect the child within. “Stop him,” she commanded her khas, “kill him.” (aGoT, Daenerys VIII)
Upon, Dany’s command, Quaro reaches for the handle of his whip. This is Dany using her tail.
Rakharo and Quaro stood beside the tent flap. Quaro took a step forward, reaching for the handle of his whip, but Qotho spun graceful as a dancer, the curved arakh rising. It caught Quaro low under the arm, the bright sharp steel biting up through leather and skin, through muscle and rib bone. Blood fountained as the young rider reeled backward, gasping. (aGoT, Daenerys VIII)
A hatchling’s tail alone is no match against a predator’s mature teeth. And so, Drogo’s teeth rips or chews off the tip of Dany’s tail here. And chopped off bodyparts die off.
The Dothraki were shouting, Mirri Maz Duur wailing inside the tent like nothing human, Quaro pleading for water as he died. (aGoT, Daenerys VIII)
At this point Jorah jumps in to take on Qotho.
Qotho wrenched the blade free. “Horselord,” Ser Jorah Mormont called. “Try me.” His longsword slid from its scabbard. (aGoT, Daenerys VIII)
Jorah here acts as Dany’s claws, while his chainmail represents Dany’s now tougher dragon skin around the limbs and throat.
The knight was clad in chainmail, with gauntlets and greaves of lobstered steel and a heavy gorget around his throat, but he had not thought to don his helm. (aGoT, Daenerys VIII)
Jorah is an accomplished and experienced fighter. He fought in Robert’s Rebellion for Ned Stark, was one of the first men who broke through the defences of the Greyjoys at Pyke during their rebellion, and a longtime sellsword in Essos. And yet, despite this George has him written as a fighter who nearly lost against Qotho.
Qotho danced backward, arakh whirling around his head in a shining blur, flickering out like lightning as the knight came on in a rush. Ser Jorah parried as best he could, but the slashes came so fast that it seemed to Dany that Qotho had four arakhs and as many arms. She heard the crunch of sword on mail, saw sparks fly as the long curved blade glanced off a gauntlet. Suddenly it was Mormont stumbling backward, and Qotho leaping to the attack. The left side of the knight’s face ran red with blood, and a cut to the hip opened a gash in his mail and left him limping. Qotho screamed taunts at him, calling him a craven, a milk man, a eunuch in an iron suit. “You die now!” he promised, arakh shivering through the red twilight. […] The curved blade slipped past the straight one and bit deep into the knight’s hip where the mail gaped open. Mormont grunted, stumbled. […] Qotho shrieked triumph, but his arakh had found bone, and for half a heartbeat it caught. It was enough. Ser Jorah brought his longsword down with all the strength left him, through flesh and muscle and bone, and Qotho’s forearm dangled loose, flopping on a thin cord of skin and sinew. The knight’s next cut was at the Dothraki’s ear, so savage that Qotho’s face seemed almost to explode. (aGoT, Daenerys VIII)
That he makes Jorah end up being wounded that severely seems to make little sense with regards his swordskill and experience. It does make far more sense if he is Dany’s juvenile legs and claws.
Notice how Qotho’s arakh is associated with verbs such as slashing and biting. This matches with the idea of the arakh as teeth. If Qotho and his arakh represent Drogo’s teeth they would slash and bite in a fight with another animal. Meanwhile the image of the four arms imagery and the verb leaping matches with Qotho acting like a four legged predator. Or rather, Drogo is the four legged predator and Qotho is one of the limbs in the fight. We do not have the same imagery for Jorah, because George’s dragons do not have four legs – they have only two legs with the wings being the other two limbs.
Next, pay attention to the wounds. Jorah is cut at the face, but despite him not wearing a helm that cut is never life threatening. Instead Qotho manages to deal two cuts to the hip. The first is severe enough to cause Jorah to limp. The second time it is deep enough to hit the hip bone. Claws are attached to the legs of a dragon, and thus it makes sense for Qotho to majorly wound Jorah at the location where legs are attached to the body. This is further emphasized with Dany not being able to walk or stand by herself during this scene, and Jorah literally being her legs to carry her to Mirri when she goes into labor.
An arm went under her waist, and then Ser Jorah was lifting her off her feet. […] She was being carried. Her eyes opened to gaze up at a flat dead sky, black and bleak and starless. Please, no. The sound of Mirri Maz Duur’s voice grew louder, until it filled the world. The shapes! she screamed. The dancers! Ser Jorah carried her inside the tent. (aGoT, Daenerys VIII)
In contrast, Jorah’s most destructive harm to Qotho is to the face, where the teeth are. Jorah also cut off Qotho’s arm: by slaying Qotho, Jorah has taken down one of Drogo’s four limbs.
After Jorah slays Qotho, the fight continues between Rakharo and Haggo. Both use the arakh. And then Jhogo’s whip comes into play. So these are teeth clashing with teeth, until the dragon tail destabilizes the other. Teeth and (remaining) tail were used in unison.
Rakharo was fighting Haggo, arakh dancing with arakh until Jhogo’s whip cracked, loud as thunder, the lash coiling around Haggo’s throat. A yank, and the bloodrider stumbled backward, losing his feet and his sword. Rakharo sprang forward, howling, swinging his arakh down with both hands through the top of Haggo’s head. The point caught between his eyes, red and quivering. (aGoT, Daenerys VIII)
Once more, the head is injured, where the teeth are. And Drogo’s sole defense left is Cohollo and his khalasar body: blunt stones and Cohollo’s tiny claw as a knife.
She tried to crawl toward the tent, but Cohollo caught her. Fingers in her hair, he pulled her head back and she felt the cold touch of his knife at her throat. “My baby,” she screamed, and perhaps the gods heard, for as quick as that, Cohollo was dead. Aggo’s arrow took him under the arm, to pierce his lungs and heart. (aGoT, Daenerys IX)
The last limb is taken down with Dany’s first firebolt.
So, why the lungs and heart then? It was Drogo’s heart that had blackened that kicked off Dany pleading for Mirri to use magic to save Drogo.
When they were alone, Ser Jorah drew his dagger. Deftly, with a delicacy surprising in such a big man, he began to scrape away the black leaves and dried blue mud from Drogo’s chest. The plaster had caked hard as the mud walls of the Lamb Men, and like those walls it cracked easily. Ser Jorah broke the dry mud with his knife, pried the chunks from the flesh, peeled off the leaves one by one. A foul, sweet smell rose from the wound, so thick it almost choked her. The leaves were crusted with blood and pus, Drogo’s breast black and glistening with corruption. (aGoT, Daenerys VIII)
Drogo fought through his kos from that happening to save his soul. But Dany the dragon won that battle once Cohollo goes down. It kills Drogo’s last resistence, his last breath and soul, only to be a healed shell of a body. In a way, Dany the dragon shred and charred Drogo’s heart. This chapter links to her eating the raw horse heart in Vaes Dothrak and is analogous to Drogon’s later destruction of the rotten indigo “black” heart of the Undying. George makes sure in the relevant ritual chapter that “this is the same”!
“This is bloodmagic,” he said. “It is forbidden.”
“I am khaleesi, and I say it is not forbidden. In Vaes Dothrak, Khal Drogo slew a stallion and I ate his heart, to give our son strength and courage. This is the same. The same.” (aGoT, Daenerys VIII)
Though the heart of the stallion in Dany’s fifth chapter was raw, its blood looks black to Dany.
The heart was steaming in the cool evening air when Khal Drogo set it before her, raw and bloody. […] The stallion’s blood looked black in the flickering orange glare of the torches that ringed the high chalk walls of the pit. (aGoT, Daenerys V)
How Dany as a dragon managed to eat and keep the raw horse heart down, and what the recurrence of this image means we will explore in part III.
Similar analysis of the fighting scene outside the tent during Mirri’s ritual can be done for Dany’s khas and Jorah acting on command to stop the rapes of some of the Lamb women in her seventh chapter. Jhogo uses the arakh to behead a rapist, Jorah claws another while Aggo finishes him with an arrow, aka firebolt.
The rapers laughed at him. One man shouted back. Jhogo’s arakh flashed, and the man’s head went tumbling from his shoulders. Laughter turned to curses as the horsemen reached for weapons, but by then Quaro and Aggo and Rakharo were there. She saw Aggo point across the road to where she sat upon her silver. […] All the while the man atop the lamb girl continued to plunge in and out of her, so intent on his pleasure that he seemed unaware of what was going on around him. Ser Jorah dismounted and wrenched him off with a mailed hand. The Dothraki went sprawling in the mud, bounced up with a knife in hand, and died with Aggo’s arrow through his throat. (aGoT, Daenerys VII)
I have shown in the prior sections how Dany’s wingspan and tail grew in aSoS. This is true for her teeth, claws and firepower. With the grown tail the Harpy’s fingers she claims the Unsullied – 8000 fully trained plus those still in training. This whip features pointy teeth on the woman’s head as pommel and nine claws at each end of the “fingers”. So, this alone suggests that we ought to see the Unsullied as Dany’s extra teeth and claws.
The weapons of the Unsullied are short spears and swords.
“All the world knows that the Unsullied are masters of spear and shield and shortsword.” […] “They begin their training at five. Every day they train from dawn to dusk, until they have mastered the shortsword, the shield, and the three spears. […]” (aSoS, Daenerys II)
Swords certainly can be either teeth or claws. But then there are also the spears. They can function in two ways – held to stab orthrown. In other words, the spears can act like teeth or claws when used to stab, but function as firepower when thrown. In the later case, they are just large and long arrows. Their shields can be seen as a dragon’s hardened scales.
That we are about to see a new set of teeth, claws and firepower, before Dany acquires the Unsullied, is illustrated by Dany noticing Rhakaro and Aggo sharpening the arakh and fitting a new string to the dragonbone bow respectively.
Outside her door she found Aggo fitting a new string to his bow by the light of a swinging oil lamp. Rakharo sat crosslegged on the deck beside him, sharpening his arakh with a whetstone. (aSoS, Daenerys III)
Think of baby animals that start out with milk teeth, but over time these are replaced with larger and stronger ones when they are juveniles, or the vocal chords of boys altering so their voice drops.
In the above quote you can notice how the bow is associated to fire as it is Aggo who is said to work by the light of an oil lamp. This brings us to Dany’s increased dragonfire power. First, her dragons’ fire is hers to command.
She took a chunk of salt pork out of the bowl in her lap and held it up for her dragons to see. All three of them eyed it hungrily. Rhaegal spread green wings and stirred the air, and Viserion’s neck swayed back and forth like a long pale snake’s as he followed the movement of her hand. “Drogon,” Dany said softly, “dracarys.” And she tossed the pork in the air. Drogon moved quicker than a striking cobra. Flame roared from his mouth, orange and scarlet and black, searing the meat before it began to fall. (aSoS, Daenerys I)
The Fall of Astapor is heralded by her double attack on Kraznys. First she slashes his face with the Harpy’s fingers and then orders Drogon to set him aflame.
“There is a reason. A dragon is no slave.” And Dany swept the lash down as hard as she could across the slaver’s face. Kraznys screamed and staggered back, the blood running red down his cheeks into his perfumed beard. The harpy’s fingers had torn his features half to pieces with one slash, but she did not pause to contemplate the ruin. “Drogon,” she sang out loudly, sweetly, all her fear forgotten. “Dracarys.” The black dragon spread his wings and roared. A lance of swirling dark flame took Kraznys full in the face. His eyes melted and ran down his cheeks, and the oil in his hair and beard burst so fiercely into fire that for an instant the slaver wore a burning crown twice as tall as his head. The sudden stench of charred meat overwhelmed even his perfume, and his wail seemed to drown all other sound. (aSoS, Daenerys III)
Notice how GRRM compares the flame to a lance, which is an alternative word for spear, or a particular type of spear.
Shortly after, she commands the Unsullied to attack, and does so by using the dracarys command, a command they echo.
“Unsullied!” Dany galloped before them, her silver-gold braid flying behind her, her bell chiming with every stride. “Slay the Good Masters, slay the soldiers, slay every man who wears a tokar or holds a whip, but harm no child under twelve, and strike the chains off every slave you see.” She raised the harpy’s fingers in the air . . . and then she flung the scourge aside. “Freedom!” she sang out. “Dracarys! Dracarys!”
“Dracarys!” they shouted back, the sweetest word she’d ever heard. “Dracarys! Dracarys!” And all around them slavers ran and sobbed and begged and died, and the dusty air was filled with spears and fire. (aSoS, Daenerys III)
But Astapor is not won solely with the Unsullied. After Dany let Drogon loose on Kraznys en before she orders the Unsullied to attack with her Dracarys-command, we see all of her dragons in action along with Jhogo and his whip, Rakhara using both arakh and bow, and Aggo shooting down many slavers in tokars.
Then the Plaza of Punishment blew apart into blood and chaos. The Good Masters were shrieking, stumbling, shoving one another aside and tripping over the fringes of their tokars in their haste. Drogon flew almost lazily at Kraznys, black wings beating. As he gave the slaver another taste of fire, Irri and Jhiqui unchained Viserion and Rhaegal, and suddenly there were three dragons in the air. When Dany turned to look, a third of Astapor’s proud demon-horned warriors were fighting to stay atop their terrified mounts, and another third were fleeing in a bright blaze of shiny copper. One man kept his saddle long enough to draw a sword, but Jhogo’s whip coiled about his neck and cut off his shout. Another lost a hand to Rakharo’s arakh and rode off reeling and spurting blood. Aggo sat calmly notching arrows to his bowstring and sending them at tokars. Silver, gold, or plain, he cared nothing for the fringe. Strong Belwas had his arakh out as well, and he spun it as he charged.
“Spears!” Dany heard one Astapori shout. It was Grazdan, old Grazdan in his tokar heavy with pearls. “Unsullied! Defend us, stop them, defend your masters! Spears! Swords!” When Rakharo put an arrow through his mouth, the slaves holding his sedan chair broke and ran, dumping him unceremoniously on the ground. The old man crawled to the first rank of eunuchs, his blood pooling on the bricks. (aSoS, Daenerys III)
We notice that there is more emphasis on people being killed by arrows in the above scene.
So, we can conclude that just like Dany’s khas combined are tail, teeth and firepower on wings, the Unsullied are a combo of teeth, claws and firepower and tougher scales. And as eunuchs they have the genderlesness aspect of dragons.
Of course the sellswords in the sellsword companies that join Dany after Yunkai wield swords, bows and arakhs, and thus also add to these dragon features. Daario Naharis is of interest here, since we learn early on that he has two beloved blades – an arakh and a stiletto.
He stood with his hands crossed at the wrists, his palms resting on the pommels of his blades; a curving Dothraki arakh on his left hip, a Myrish stiletto on his right. Their hilts were a matched pair of golden women, naked and wanton. (aSoS, Daenerys IV)
While one may question the sincerity of the Myrish stiletto (Myrish objects are often tied to a liar or deceiver, similar to someone offering Arbor Gold), it is the Dothraki arakh that Daario uses to swear his allegiance to Dany.
In a blink, Daario’s arakh was free of its sheath. His submission was as outrageous as the rest of him, a great swoop that brought his face down to her toes. “My sword is yours. My life is yours. My love is yours. My blood, my body, my songs, you own them all. I live and die at your command, fair queen.” (aSoS, Daenerys IV)
One of Daario’s (many) visual features is his golden tooth. So, it is safe to say that the arakh and Daario’s teeth are Dany’s. And when he goes over to Yunkai as voluntarily hostage, he leaves his arakh teeth and stiletto with Dany.
The expected addition of all of the Dothraki united in The Winds of Winter will only enlargen her teeth, tail and firepower.
The Belly
So far, I skipped Strong Belwas and Selmy. It is time to specify Belwas’s role. In short, he is Dany’s dragon belly. Unlike beautiful human females aged between 14 to 16, real dragons grow a belly. And the larger and older they get, the bigger the belly.
The brass was polished to a high sheen. Dany could see her face in it . . . and when Ser Jorah angled it to the right, she could see behind her. “I see a fat brown man and an older man with a staff. Which is it?” […] The old man had the look of Westeros about him, and the brown-skinned one must weigh twenty stone. […] The brown man was near as wide as he’d looked in the platter, with a gleaming bald head and the smooth cheeks of a eunuch. A long curving arakh was thrust through the sweat-stained yellow silk of his bellyband. Above the silk, he was naked but for an absurdly tiny iron-studded vest. Old scars crisscrossed his tree-trunk arms, huge chest, and massive belly, pale against his nut-brown skin. […] The huge brown eunuch swaggered forward, sheathing his arakh. “I am Belwas. Strong Belwas they name me in the fighting pits of Meereen. Never did I lose.” He slapped his belly, covered with scars. “I let each man cut me once, before I kill him. Count the cuts and you will know how many Strong Belwas has slain.” […] “From Meereen I am sold to Qohor, and then to Pentos and the fat man with sweet stink in his hair. He it was who send Strong Belwas back across the sea, and old Whitebeard to serve him.” (aCoK, Daenerys V)
Belwas seems an amusing sidekick, some comic relief with Arstan as Selmy the more significant aid to Dany. From the get go his usability is put into question.
Strong Belwas was an ex-slave, bred and trained in the fighting pits of Meereen. Magister Illyrio had sent him to guard her, or so Belwas claimed, and it was true that she needed guarding. […] Ser Jorah saved me from the poisoner, and Arstan Whitebeard from the manticore. Perhaps Strong Belwas will save me from the next. He was huge enough, with arms like small trees and a great curved arakh so sharp he might have shaved with it, in the unlikely event of hair sprouting on those smooth brown cheeks. Yet he was childlike as well. As a protector, he leaves much to be desired. (aSoS, Daenerys I)
We might suspect him to be an extra dragon tooth, because of his arakh, but the fact he is gap-toothed actually belies this. It is a contradiction to his arakh. In aSoS, his greatest action on page is defeating and killing Oznak zo Pahl. Meereen sends out Oznak to challenge Dany to send a champion. It is nothing but a PR stunt by Meereen to demoralize Dany’s army with insults. It has no actual combat strategy, since even if Dany’s champion wins, Meereen will not surrender to her. Hence, Dany elects to send Belwas, because she believes his potential death against Oznak would cost her the least.
“Strong Belwas was a slave here in the fighting pits. If this highborn Oznak should fall to such the Great Masters will be shamed, while if he wins . . . well, it is a poor victory for one so noble, one that Meereen can take no pride in.” And unlike Ser Jorah, Daario, Brown Ben, and her three bloodriders, the eunuch did not lead troops, plan battles, or give her counsel. He does nothing but eat and boast and bellow at Arstan. Belwas was the man she could most easily spare. And it was time she learned what sort of protector Magister Illyrio had sent her. (aSoS, Daenerys V)
George spends a lot of writing on this scene, relatively to the weight its outcome has – Belwas wins, but Dany’s army still has to conquer the city by night. It is as Jorah says to Dany, “Putting up a show“.
“A victory without meaning,” Ser Jorah cautioned. “We will not win Meereen by killing its defenders one at a time.” (aSoS, Daenerys V)
His best war act though is off-page in aSoS: he sets the pit-fighter slaves free to help overtake Meereen from within.
They took some wrong turnings, but once they found the surface Strong Belwas led them to the nearest fighting pit, where they surprised a few guards and struck the chains off the slaves. Within an hour, half the fighting slaves in Meereen had risen. (aSoS, Daenerys VI)
George also “tips” us off that it will not be Belwas’s arakh that will ultimately matter to Dany, before he faces Meereen’s champion Oznak.
The aged squire honed Belwas’s arakh every evening and rubbed it down with bright red oil. (aSoS, Daenerys V)
George uses red to alert the reader that this is not the person or thing to bet on. Those who ride red stallions, like Drogo, or have red hair, like Ygritte, will end up dead or disappearing for example. (See the Trail of the Red Stallion)Red is different from Arbor Gold though in that often these people are sincere in their intentions, sometimes protagonists who are good people in George’s prior writing.
Another example that is far more useful for Belwas’s arakh being rubbed in bright red oil is the dragon Meleys, who had two dragonriders – Alyssa Targaryen and her niece Rhaenys Targaryen. Both were in line to be queen of Westeros. Alyssa was Jaehaerys I’s daughter wed to her brother Baelon Targaryen who was the second in line male to the Iron Throne in case the Old King died. When their elder brother Aemon Targaryen died, Baelon became the expected future king and his sister-wife the future queen of course. But she died giving birth to her third son before such a thing could happen. Meanwhile Rhaenys was the granddaughter of the Old King Jaehaerys I and the sole child of Aemon Targaryen. Her father’s death had caused some friction on whether her uncle Baelon or she were Jaehaerys’s heir, as it was not made explicit at the time that the Targaryen dynasty would prefer male heirs over female heirs, and thus an uncle would inherit before a daughter. With Jaehaerys still alive he had the freedom to appoint his son Baelon as heir. But then Baelon died before Jaehaerys. Rhaenys had given Jaehaerys a great-grandson in Laenor Velaryon, while Baelon and Alyssa had gifted Jaehaerys with two grandsons, Viserys and Daemon Targaryen. Hence, Rhaenys and Viserys were in the competing running to be Jaehaerys’s heir in the great council of 101 AC. The council chose Viserys and Rhaenys became known as the queen-who-never-was. And here is the tidbit about the dragon Meleys – she was nicknamed the Red Queen.
So, on the one hand Belwas would not be able to deceive someone even if he tried. And his skill with the arakh is proven to be considerable in the actual duel between Oznak and Belwas.
Oznak leapt clear of his horse and managed to draw his sword before Strong Belwas was on him. Steel sang against steel, too fast and furious for Dany to follow the blows. It could not have been a dozen heartbeats before Belwas’s chest was awash in blood from a slice below his breasts, and Oznak zo Pahl had an arakh planted right between his ram’s horns. The eunuch wrenched the blade loose and parted the hero’s head from his body with three savage blows to the neck. He held it up high for the Meereenese to see, then flung it toward the city gates and let it bounce and roll across the sand. (aSoS, Daenerys V)
Then why does George warn the reader not to bet on Belwas’s arakh by having it being taken care of daily with red oil? Well, early on Dany speculated that Belwas’s arakh might one day save her. So, it seems that George warns us that saving Dany with his arakh is not the answer or Belwas’s use or role.
George does not reveal Belwas’s use until the near end of aDwD, when Belwas saved Dany, unwittingly, from a third poisoning attempt when he ate all the locusts at Daznak’s Pit.
Hizdahr had stocked their box with flagons of chilled wine and sweetwater, with figs, dates, melons, and pomegranates, with pecans and peppers and a big bowl of honeyed locusts. Strong Belwas bellowed, “Locusts!” as he seized the bowl and began to crunch them by the handful. […] He had finished all the honeyed locusts. He gave a belch and took a swig of wine. […] “Strong Belwas ate too many locusts.” There was a queasy look on Belwas’s broad brown face. “Strong Belwas needs milk.” […] Strong Belwas gave a moan, stumbled from his seat, and fell to his knees. […] Strong Belwas was retching noisily. […] Strong Belwas was still vomiting. (aDwD, Daenerys IX)
“That day at Daznak’s Pit, some of the food in the royal box was poisoned. It was only chance that Strong Belwas ate it all. The Blue Graces say that only his size and freakish strength have saved him, but it was a near thing. He may yet die.” (aDwD, the Discarded Knight)
Belwas even manages to survive it.
Last to come, Strong Belwas lumbered into the hall. The eunuch had looked death in the face, so near he might have kissed her on the lips. It had marked him. He looked to have lost two stone of weight, and the dark brown skin that had once stretched tight across a massive chest and belly, crossed by a hundred faded scars, now hung on him in loose folds, sagging and wobbling, like a robe cut three sizes too large. His step had slowed as well, and seemed a bit uncertain. […] “Whitebeard.” Belwas smiled. “Where is liver and onions? Strong Belwas is not so strong as before, he must eat, get big again. They made Strong Belwas sick. Someone must die.” (aDwD, The Queen’s Hand)
It was Belwas’s belly that saved him and Dany. George tipped us from the get go, every time he had Belwas eat and slap his belly, and with the name of one of the ships that Dany visits at the Qartheen harbor, before Belwas enters in the sight of Dany’s mirror. The captain has no liking to Dothraki, while Belwas mocks them after Selmy saves Dany from the manticore.
The owner of Lord Faro’s Belly would risk dragons, but not Dothraki. “I’ll have no such godless savages in my Belly, I’ll not.” (aCoK, Daenerys V)
Notice too how the owner’s name is Faro, which seems a reference to fire: faro in Italian and Spanish means lighthouse, and a lighthouse on Planetos would use fire for a beacon.
Belwas’s belly matches the depiction of an adult dragon, including the scars. The belly tends to be the most vulnerable area of an animal, and would be so too with dragon hatchlings the size of a cat. It therefore tends to be often targeted by a predator. But as a dragon grows larger and older, its scales thicken, including around the belly area. While some spears and other arms could pierce the scales of an adult dragon around the belly area, it would only enrage them.
We know not of any adult dragon having been successfully killed that way. Take for instance the four dragons in the dragonpit that were killed by the mob that attacked them the night that Rhaenyra was forced to flee King’s Landing after her disastrous reign. The dragon Shrykos of about seven years old was the first to die, through repeated axe blows to the head. Morghul was of the same age and killed by a spear in the eye. Tyraxes was thirteen. It is claimed he was killed by several blows while entangled in a web of steel chains that limited his movement. Dreamfyre was ninety eight years old. She had managed to tear herself free from her chains and flew to the top of the dome of the dragonpit to rain dragonfire on the mob, thereby exposing her belly. Here we are told …
Even at the apex of the dome, the dragon was within easy reach of archer and crossbowman, and arrows and quarrels flew at Dreamfyre wherever she went, at such close range that some few even punched through her scales. (Fire and Blood, The Dying of the Dragons – Rhaenyra Overthrown)
But none of these managed to kill Dreamfyre. As with Morghul, Dreamfyre was killed with a crossbow bolt into her eye.
And so it is with Belwas. His belly and chest have been nicked and slashed by any opponent he faced in the pit and Oznak, but never was this a mortal wound. Instead it allowed him to get close enough to kill his opponent in the meantime.
One of the consequences to Belwas being Dany’s dragon belly is that now you may wonder what the significance is of Dany having had a pregnant belly as a hatchling in aGoT. Of course, her pregnancy is a crucial plot arc in aGoT for the human Dany, but yes it is entirely possible that it visually was meant to signify Dany as a hatchling starting to grow its initial dragon belly. Too much of a stretch? How about this scene?
[Viserys] laid the point of his sword between Daenerys’s breasts and slid it downward, over the curve of her belly. “I want what I came for,” he told her. “I want the crown he promised me. He bought you, but he never paid for you. Tell him I want what I bargained for, or I’m taking you back. You and the eggs both. He can keep his bloody foal. I’ll cut the bastard out and leave it for him.” The sword point pushed through her silks and pricked at her navel. Viserys was weeping, she saw; weeping and laughing, both at the same time, this man who had once been her brother. (aGoT, Daenerys V)
Viserys did not just threaten Dany verbally. He pricked her belly with his sword point. George crafted Belwas’s scars on his belly after this scene. And like it means death to Belwas’s opponents, it meant death here too for Viserys.
Distantly, as from far away, Dany heard her handmaid Jhiqui sobbing in fear, pleading that she dared not translate, that the khal would bind her and drag her behind his horse all the way up the Mother of Mountains. She put her arm around the girl. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “I shall tell him.” (aGoT, Daenerys V)
And there is another commonality between pregnant Danny and Belwas: Jorah’s clumsiness causing Dany to fall and nearly hurting her belly.
The wineseller shrugged, reached for the cup … and grabbed the cask instead, flinging it at her with both hands. Ser Jorah bulled into her, knocking her out of the way. The cask bounced off his shoulder and smashed open on the ground. Dany stumbled and lost her feet. “No,” she screamed, thrusting her hands out to break her fall … and Doreah caught her by the arm and wrenched her backward, so she landed on her legs and not her belly. (aGoT, Daenerys VI)
Ser Jorah slammed past her, and Dany stumbled to one knee. She heard the hiss again. The old man drove the butt of his staff into the ground, Aggo came riding through an eggseller’s stall and vaulted from his saddle, Jhogo’s whip cracked overhead, Ser Jorah slammed the eunuch over the head with the brass platter, sailors and whores and merchants were fleeing or shouting or both . . .
Dany tending to stumble and “lose her feet” likely has to do with Jorah being or acting as Dany’s legs in those moments. However, it also twice endangers her belly. And while one may argue that in the second scene Dany has not yet claimed Belwas officially, had no idea yet who or what he is, notice how just before Jorah bangs the platter onto the eunuch’s head, Jhogo cracked his whip, signaling an acquisition to Dany’s dragon body.
So, why is there an absence of a belly in aCoK, or after Dany’s flight on Drogon? In both periods, Dany goes through a near starvation period in the red waste and again in the Dothraki Sea.
There was little forage in the red waste, and less water. It was a sere and desolate land of low hills and barren windswept plains. The rivers they crossed were dry as dead men’s bones. Their mounts subsisted on the tough brown devilgrass that grew in clumps at the base of rocks and dead trees. […] The deeper they rode into the waste, the smaller the pools became, while the distance between them grew. […] Wine gave out first, and soon thereafter the clotted mare’s milk the horselords loved better than mead. Then their stores of flatbread and dried meat were exhausted as well. Their hunters found no game, and only the flesh of their dead horses filled their bellies. […] Dany hungered and thirsted with the rest of them. The milk in her breasts dried up, her nipples cracked and bled, and the flesh fell away from her day by day until she was lean and hard as a stick, […] (aCoK, Daenerys I)
Hers had been a lonely sojourn, and for most of it she had been hurt and hungry … yet despite it all she had been strangely happy here. A few aches, an empty belly, chills by night […] She was hungry too. One morning she had found some wild onions growing halfway down the south slope, and later that same day a leafy reddish vegetable that might have been some queer sort of cabbage. Whatever it was, it had not made her sick. Aside from that, and one fish that she had caught in the spring-fed pool outside of Drogon’s cave, she had survived as best she could on the dragon’s leavings, on burned bones and chunks of smoking meat, half-charred and half-raw. She needed more, she knew. […] She had no other drink but the morning dew that glistened on the tall grass, and no food at all unless she cared to eat the grass. I could try eating ants. The little yellow ones were too small to provide much in the way of nourishment, but there were red ants in the grass, and those were bigger. (aDwD, Daenerys X)
It takes a while before enough reserve is rebuilt to form a belly while still growing, and Dany managed that by the end of aCoK, when Belwas steps into her mirrow view.
That Dany sees Belwas (and Selmy) in the bronze mirroring platter is of importance in relation to the Serwyn tale – no, I did not forget about Serwyn or Saint George. There are several instances where Dany looks into a mirror.
Dany glanced at her image in the silvered looking glass that Illyrio had so thoughtfully provided. A princess, she thought, but she remembered what the girl had said, how Khal Drogo was so rich even his slaves wore golden collars. She felt a sudden chill, and gooseflesh pimpled her bare arms. (aGoT, Daenerys I)
The brass was polished to a high sheen. Dany could see her face in it . . . and when Ser Jorah angled it to the right, she could see behind her. “I see a fat brown man and an older man with a staff. Which is it?”
[…]
“Ten, Khaleesi, because you are so lovely. Use it for a looking glass. Only brass this fine could capture such beauty.” (aCoK, Daenerys V)When she was dressed, Missandei brought her a polished silver glass so she could see how she looked. Dany stared at herself in silence. Is this the face of a conqueror? So far as she could tell, she still looked like a little girl. (aSoS, Daenerys VI)
In the smoldering red pits of Drogon’s eyes, Dany saw her own reflection. How small she looked, how weak and frail and scared. (aDwD, Daenerys IX)
Notice that in all instances she sees her own reflection, looks at herself. In the Serwyn legend a mirror shield is used to distract a dragon by having it stare at its own reflection. And this is what happens here, each time: Dany looks into the mirror and stares at her own dragon reflection. I have argued how princess ought to be translated into dragon in relation to Targaryens. In the third instance, Dany has conquered and given in to her violent dragon instincts, but recognizes her humanity and ends up giving into it to try and rule Meereen. The last reflection is in the eyes of a dragon, matching the soul dragon in her dragon dreams. Eyes are said to be the mirror of the soul. Whether Drogon’s soul is that of a fearful, frail little human girl or the Dany’s soul is that of a black-red dragon, or even both at once I will leave as a thought to ponder. But certainly within the context of Serwyn’s mirror shield it visualizes Dany staring at a dragon through a mirror. And so, it is likewise with the brass platter: Dany sees herself and then Belwas and Selmy. In all three other instances after Dany sees her own reflection she ponders about a part of herself that she sees. Why would Belwas and Selmy be an exception to this? On the contrary, Dany seeing Belwas and Selmy while looking into a mirror would mean they are a part of her dragon body, an extension of her, not a separate duo of individuals she is spying on.
Edit
A recent find in the short story The Princess and the Queen, which was the basis of the Dance of the Dragons in Fire and Blood I, confirms the parallels I am making between the attributes as the features of a dragon.
When two dragons meet in mortal combat, therefore, they will oft employ weapons other than their flame: claws black as iron, long as swords, and sharp as razors, jaws so powerful they can crunch through even a knight’s steel plate, tails like whips whose lashing blows have been known to smash wagons to splinters, break the spine of heavy destriers, and send men flying fifty feet in the air. (The Princess and the Queen)
Conclusion or tl;tr
This concludes the second essay in the Dany series in relation to the legend of Saint George and the Dragon. We cannot but conclude that she is the true dragon in the story. In her very first chapter she is like a dragon still in the egg about to hatch. She hatches during her wedding ceremony, between salt tears and jumping a firepit on a smoking silver horse. She is gifted dragonbone, a bow without firepower (not until later), arakh teeth, a whip of a tail and her silver for wings. Out in the Dothraki Sea, the wilderness, free from walls and ceilings, Dany grows and with her whipping tail acquires Jorah to become her advizing claw and legs. Her dragon size is not just restricted to the size of her actual dragons or Drogon once she becomes his rider. The more she grows, the bigger her wings become with the addition of shipsails and sellsword companies, as well as teeth, claws and firepower in the form of the Unsullied. With the expectation that the Windblown, Victarion’s fleet and all the Dothraki will end up joining her, she will become a dragon large enough to cover a continent and ocean, and thus a Dragon that can mount the world.
I have argued that we should translate the word princess and prince into dragon based on a deeper inspection of the history of the prophecy known as The Prince that was Promised and Azor Ahai returned. I do believe that the commonalities between both prophecies lean towards them being about the same person(s). I suggested that the seeming contradicting claims and a maester’s objections about the origin of the dragons being the shadowlands of Asshai may be resolved via:
- the people of the shadow (with Valyrian features) migrating to the Valyrian peninsula with dragons and dragon eggs after some cataclysm that made the hinterland of Asshai barren and degenerative, in search of a perfect volcanic area and led by prophetic dragon dreams. Once there they spread their genes amongst the local people where the features now referred to as Valyrian became a dominant phenotype in a few centuries through genetic drift at an isolated location, as happened at Lys, Dragonstone, potentially Oldtown, the island of the Daynes and seems to have been happening the past century at Sapphire Isle.
- Or through shadowbinders who had prophetic visions that made them believe that Azor Ahai returned would be born someday from a dragonriding descendent of the then dragonless sheepherders living at the Valyrian peninsula. And that the desire of the shadowbinders to make the prophecy come about motivated them to bring eggs and knowledge about rearing dragons to the Valyrian peninsula.
Whichever actually happened, my point is that prophecy was a major motivation and that the Azor Ahai legend and prophecy was known to the dragonriding families at Valyria. Over time this knowledge may have been lost after the Doom, but before the Doom their extensive mining that required them to enslave a whole continent as big as Essos from Ghis to Pentos and development of Valyrian steel suggests they tried to make their own magical Lightbringer. That the Valyrians could be led by belief in prophecy as a society is suggested by a prophecy about the gold of Casterly Rock possibly being their ending. Despite their lust of gold, the Valyrians stayed away from Westeros and certainly Casterly Rock. Prophecies are of course annoying pesky things, and it turns out that Jaime of Casterly Rock in golden armor killed the last dynastic Targaryen king (with Valyrian features) on the Iron Throne. Ironically, this event may have been the potential prophetic vision some Valyrian wizard saw centuries or millenia before the Doom, and might be a reason why the rising empire of Valyria chose to never have a king or emperor. Regardless of the reason why they had no kings or emperors, the Valyrian language would only have a loan word for such a leader, not an actual Valyrian original word for it. So, the Azor Ahai prophecy was called the Dragon that was Promised amongst them. When this prophecy resurfaces centuries after the Doom both in old scrolls at Dragonstone and via dragon dreams amongst the generation of Maekar and Aegon V, the Targaryens who were kings and princes translated it into the Prince that was Promised, since princes were often nicknamed dragon. I will go even further than that. Since actual female dragons sometimes were nicknamed queen as well as lady all the titles Dany is addressed with (see Part I) can be translated into dragon.
I argued that the inconsistencies regarding Dany’s dragon dreams are best resolved by regarding the dragon in the dreams as her personal dragon spirit within, rather than Drogon in his egg. And while Dany and consequentionally the reader is led to believe that it is extreme heat that will help hatch dragon eggs, as did Aegon V before her did, I point out that her second dragon dream and the actual hatching event in her last chapter of aGoT point out that it was Dany who needed to be heated. Since the eggs are gifted to her at her wedding ceremony and she herself was hatched as a dragon during that ceremony, she is born a female with her eggs in her ovaries in readiness, and her own body heat incubates the eggs. Aside from Dany’s body heat being crucial, so are the dead. Her own wedding, where she herself hatched as dragon, included several people dying during the festivities. And of course the hatching of the dragons at the end of aGoT is also preceded by many deaths. What we learn on how the purple bloodflies hatch their eggs – place them in the dead or dying – reveals that it is the second necessity. I must stress I consider this transferring incubation heat from Dany to the eggs and the many deaths as necessary only after the demise of the dragons more than hundred fifty years ago and all that was left were petrified dragon eggs.
Dany has plenty of “saviors”, but as I have shown they are also her dragon claws, teeth, belly and tail. And she claims them all via the cracking of a whip. If these men are body parts of Dany’s dragon body, can we then still regard them as saviors? It seems more correct to say then that as a dragon Dany saves herself. “Ah, but you left out Selmy Barristan!” you might protest. Yes, I did, so far. I am only keeping the best for last.
In the third essay I will cover certain recurring cycles and events in Dany’s arc: the repetitive looking into a mirror, her switch between green dragon and black-red dragon, the black heart devouring or destroying, the poisoning attempts. And more importantly we will investigate what this implies for Dany’s arc that is still to be published, since we will see her look at her own reflection again, switch colors and far more heart eating.
Cerberus